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arXiv · astro-ph/0701273

Studying the evolution of large-scale structure with the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey

Abstract

The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS) currently offers a unique combination of depth, angular size and number of measured galaxies among surveys of the distant Universe: ~ 11,000 spectra over 0.5 deg2 to I_{AB}=24 (VVDS-Deep), 35,000 spectra over ~ 7 deg2 to I_{AB}=22.5 (VVDS-Wide). The current ``First Epoch'' data from VVDS-Deep already allow investigations of galaxy clustering and its dependence on galaxy properties to be extended to redshifts ~1.2-1.5, in addition to measuring accurately evolution in the properties of galaxies up to z~4. This paper concentrates on the main results obtained so far on galaxy clustering. Overall, L* galaxies at z~ 1.5 show a correlation length r_0=3.6\pm 0.7. As a consequence, the linear galaxy bias at fixed luminosity rises over the same range from the value b~1 measured locally, to b=1.5 +/- 0.1. The interplay of galaxy and structure evolution in producing this observation is discussed in some detail. Galaxy clustering is found to depend on galaxy luminosity also at z~ 1, but luminous galaxies at this redshift show a significantly steeper small-scale correlation function than their z=0 counterparts. Finally, red galaxies remain more clustered than blue galaxies out to similar redshifts, with a nearly constant relative bias among the two classes, b_{rel}~1.4, despite the rather dramatic evolution of the color-density relation over the same redshift range.

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BibTeXRIS

L. Guzzo, O. Le Fevre, B. Meneux, A. Pollo, C. Marinoni, A. Cappi, O. Cucciati, B. Garilli, A. Iovino, H. J. McCracken, D. Bottini, V. Le Brun, D. Maccagni, J. P. Picat, R. Scaramella, M. Scodeggio, L. Tresse, G. Vettolani, A. Zanichelli. 2007-01-09. Studying the evolution of large-scale structure with the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701273

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