Measuring Bulk Flows in Large Scale Surveys

Abstract

We follow a formalism presented by Kaiser to calculate the variance of bulk flows in large scale surveys. We apply the formalism to a mock survey of Abell clusters á la Lauer \& Postman and find the variance in the expected bulk velocities in a universe with CDM, MDM and IRAS--QDOT power spectra. We calculate the velocity variance as a function of the 1--D velocity dispersion of the clusters and the size of the survey.

9 pages, uuencode compressed postscript file. Proceedings of IAP Colloq 9, "Cosmological Velocity Fields" ed. F Bouchet & M. Lachieze-Rey. UM AC 93-10