The luminosity bias relation from filaments in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Four

Abstract

We compare quantitative estimates of the filamentarity of the galaxy distribution in seven nearly two dimensional sections from the survey against the predictions of LCDM N-body simulations. The filamentarity of the actual galaxy distribution is known to be luminosity dependent. It is also known that the filamentarity of the simulated galaxy distribution is highly sensitive to the bias, and the simulations are consistent with the data for only a narrow range of bias. We apply this feature to several volume limited subsamples with different luminosities to determine a luminosity bias relation. The relative bias $b/b^*$ as a function of the luminosity ratio $L/L^*$ is found to be well described by a straight line $b/b^*=A + B (L/L^*)$ with $A=0.833 \pm 0.009$ and $B=0.171 \pm 0.009$. Comparing with the earlier works all of which use ratios of the two-point statistics, we find that our results are consistent with Norberg et al.(2001) and Tegmark et al.(2004), while a steeper luminosity dependence found by Benoist et al.(1996) is inconsistent.