TESTING FOR A LARGE LOCAL VOID BY INVESTIGATING THE NEAR-INFRARED GALAXY LUMINOSITY FUNCTION

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 754; no. 2; pp. 131 - 17
• Main Authors: Keenan, R. C., Barger, A. J., Cowie, L. L., Wang, W.-H., Wold, I., Trouille, L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP 01.08.2012
• Subjects: ACCELERATION; ASTRONOMY; ASTROPHYSICS; ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY; COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION; COSMOLOGY; Earth, ocean, space; Estimates; Exact sciences and technology; GALAXIES; LUMINOSITY; NEAR INFRARED RADIATION; RED SHIFT; Samples; SKY; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; SUPERNOVAE; UNIVERSE; Variance; Voids; Type I supernova; Red shift; Uncertainty; Astronomical catalogues; High field; Cosmology; galaxies: fundamental parameters; Infrared galaxies; Modelling; cosmology: observations; Luminosity function
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/754/2/131

Here we present a highly complete (>90%) spectroscopic sample of 1436 galaxies selected in the H band (1.6 mu m) to study the normalization of the NIR LF at 0.1 < z < 0.3 and address the question of whether or not we reside in a large local underdensity. Our survey sample consists of all galaxies brighter than 18th magnitude in the H band drawn from six widely separated fields at high Galactic latitudes, which cover a total of ~2deg super(2) on the sky. We find that for the combination of our six fields, the product [phi]*L* at 0.1 < z < 0.3 is ~30% higher than that measured at lower redshifts. While our statistical errors in this measurement are on the ~10% level, we find the systematics due to cosmic variance may be larger still. We investigate the effects of cosmic variance on our measurement using the COSMOS cone mock catalogs from the Millennium Simulation and recent empirical estimates of cosmic variance.