Does the galaxy correlation length increase with the sample depth?

Abstract

We have analyzed the behavior of the correlation length, $r_0$, as a function of the sample depth by extracting from the CfA2 redshift survey volume--limited samples out to increasing distances. For a fractal distribution, the value of $r_0$ would increase with the volume occupied by the sample. We find no linear increase for the CfA2 samples of the sort that would be expected if the Universe preserved its small scale fractal character out to the distances considered (60--100$\hmpc$). The results instead show a roughly constant value for $r_0$ as a function of the size of the sample, with small fluctuations due to local inhomogeneities and luminosity segregation. Thus the fractal picture can safely be discarded.

Accepted for publication in ApJL

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Scaling Laws in the Distribution of Galaxies
• The Beginning and Evolution of the Universe
• Testing homogeneity on large scales in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release One
• The Scale of Cosmic Isotropy
• Fractal Dimensions of a Weakly Clustered Distribution and the Scale of Homogeneity
• Cosmological Distances and Fractal Statistics of Galaxy Distribution
• Correlation function: biasing and fractal properties of the cosmic web
• Studying neutral hydrogen structures during the epoch of reionization using fractal dimensions
• The Neighborhood Function and Its Application to Identifying Large-Scale Structure in the Comoving Universe Frame
• Luminosity segregation versus fractal scaling in the galaxy distribution