Cosmic Homogeneity Demonstrated with Luminous Red Galaxies

We test the homogeneity of the universe at z similar to 0.3 with the luminous red galaxy (LRG) spectroscopic sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. First, the mean number N(R) of LRGs within completely surveyed LRG-centered spheres of comoving radius R is shown to be proportional to R super(3) at r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2005-05, Vol.624 (1), p.54-58
Main Authors: Hogg, David W, Eisenstein, Daniel J, Blanton, Michael R, Bahcall, Neta A, Brinkmann, J, Gunn, James E, Schneider, Donald P
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We test the homogeneity of the universe at z similar to 0.3 with the luminous red galaxy (LRG) spectroscopic sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. First, the mean number N(R) of LRGs within completely surveyed LRG-centered spheres of comoving radius R is shown to be proportional to R super(3) at radii greater than R similar to 70 h super(-1) Mpc. The test has the virtue that it does not rely on the assumption that the LRG sample has a finite mean density; its results show, however, that there is such a mean density. Second, the survey sky area is divided into 10 disjoint solid angular regions, and the fractional rms density variations of the LRG sample in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.35 among these ( similar to 2 x 10 super(7) h super(-3) Mpc super(3)) regions is found to be 7% of the mean density. This variance is consistent with typical biased Lambda CDM models and puts very strong constraints on the quality of SDSS photometric calibration.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1086/429084