Percolation Galaxy Groups and Clusters in the SDSS Redshift Survey: Identification, Catalogs, and the Multiplicity Function

By A. Berlind, Joshua A. Frieman, D. Weinberg, M. Blanton, M. Warren, K. Abazajian, R. Scranton, David W. Hogg, R. Scoccimarro, N. Bahcall and 10 more. 2006

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We identify galaxy groups and clusters in volume-limited samples of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) redshift survey, using a redshift-space friends-of-friends algorithm. We optimize the friends-of-friends linking lengths to recover galaxy systems that occupy the same dark matter halos, using a set of mock catalogs created by populating halos of N-body simulations with galaxies. Extensive tests with these mock catalogs show that no combination of perpendicular and line-of-sight linking lengths is able to yield groups and clusters that simultaneously recover the true halo multiplicity function, projected size distribution, and velocity dispersion. We adopt a linking length combination that yields, for galaxy groups with 10 or more members: a group multiplicity function that is unbiased with respect to the true halo multiplicity function; an unbiased median relation between the multiplicities of groups and their associated halos; a spurious group fraction of less than ~1%; a halo completeness of more than ~97%; the correct projected size distribution as a function of multiplicity; and a velocity dispersion distribution that is ~20% too low at all multiplicities. These results hold over a range of mock catalogs that use different input recipes of populating halos with galaxies. We apply our group-finding algorithm to the SDSS data and obtain three group and cluster catalogs for three volume-limited samples that cover 3495.1 deg2 on the sky, go out to redshifts of 0.1, 0.068, and 0.045, and contain 57,138, 37,820, and 18,895 galaxies, respectively. We correct for incompleteness caused by fiber collisions and survey edges and obtain measurements of the group multiplicity function, with errors calculated from realistic mock catalogs. These multiplicity function measurements provide a key constraint on the relation between galaxy populations and dark matter halos.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e0bbe23c593a54f919a7bc1ae3a4a2838c82a21

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. F. V. D. Bosch
2. C. Conroy
3. P. Hopkins
4. Simon D. M. White
5. L. Hernquist
6. H. Mo
7. Risa Wechsler
8. Xiaohu Yang

In Ecology

1. F. V. D. Bosch
2. Xiaohu Yang
3. H. Mo
4. Risa Wechsler
5. M. Blanton
6. S. More
7. R. Skibba
8. J. Brinkmann

Citations in the corpus

• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: The Photometric Data Set for Cosmology (2017, methodology): “We first identified groups of objects using a friends-of-friends algorithm (e.g., Huchra & Geller 1982; Berlind et al. 2006).”
• GALAXY CLUSTERS IDENTIFIED FROM THE SDSS DR6 AND THEIR PROPERTIES (2009, background): “Similarly, Berlind et al. (2006) obtained three volume-limited samples from the SDSS DR3, which contain 4107, 2684, and 1357 groups with a richness ≥ 3 out to redshift of 0.1, 0.068, and 0.045, respectively.”
• Galaxy Groups in the SDSS DR4. II. Halo Occupation Statistics (2007, methodology): “…Bosch et al. 2005, 2008; Robotham et al. 2006; Zandivarez et al. 2006; Weinmann et al. 2006a, 2006b; McIntosh et al. 2008), but also probe how dark matter halos trace the large-scale structure of the universe (e.g., Yang et al. 2005c, 2006; Coil et al. 2006; Berlind et al. 2006a;Wang et al. 2007).”
• Observational probes of cosmic acceleration (2012, background): “2 (Merchán and Zandivarez, 2002; Kochanek et al., 2003; Miller et al., 2005; Merchán and Zandivarez, 2005; Berlind et al., 2006; Yang et al., 2007; Li and Yee, 2008; Blackburne and Kochanek, 2011), though high redshift spectroscopic catalogs do exist (Gerke et al.”
• Cores, filaments, and bundles: hierarchical core formation in the L1495/B213 Taurus region (2013, methodology): “One of the first and simplest algorithms to identify galaxy groups in redshift surveys is the so-called friends-of-friends (FoF) method, initially presented by Huchra & Geller (1982) and still widely used (e.g., Berlind et al. 2006).”
• Flux- and volume-limited groups/clusters for the SDSS galaxies: catalogues and mass estimation (2014, methodology): “The value (bcom = bgal(1 + z)) in our catalogue is redshift dependent (due to the constant LL in physical units) and is slightly lower (up to 0.12) than that used by Eke et al. (2004) and Berlind et al. (2006).”
• Measures of Galaxy Environment I - What is "Environment"? (2011, unknown): “Some studies also attempt to explicitly identify galaxies that are isolated or in groups or rich clusters, for example using friends-of-friends group-finding algorithms (e.g. Berlind et al. 2006; Yang et al. 2007).”
• THE GALAXY CONTENT OF SDSS CLUSTERS AND GROUPS (2007, background): “…LF is approximately independent of mass. Skibba et al. (2007) showed that the mean non-central galaxy luminosity is indeed only very weakly dependent on cluster richness (as quantified by the number of galaxies with Mr < −19.9) in the group catalogs of Yang et al. (2005) and Berlind et al. (2006).”
• Galaxy Evolution from Halo Occupation Distribution Modeling of DEEP2 and SDSS Galaxy Clustering (2007, background): “…function, can in principle be compared to those inferred through relating galaxy groups identified in the surveys (e.g., Gerke et al. 2005; Coil et al. 2006b for the DEEP2 survey and Berlind et al. 2006; Weinmann et al. 2006 for the SDSS survey) to dark matter halos for a consistency test.”
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the input catalogue and star–galaxy separation (2009, background): “…1978; de Lapparent et al. 1988; Norberg et al. 2002b; Zehavi et al. 2005) and the velocity dispersion of galaxies in groups and clusters can be used to infer dark-matter halo masses (Zwicky 1937; Huchra & Geller 1982; Moore et al. 1993; Carlberg et al. 1996; Eke et al. 2004; Berlind et al. 2006).”
• Are Brightest Halo Galaxies Central Galaxies (2010, methodology): “…2003; Zehavi et al. 2005; Zheng et al. 2005; Cooray 2005; van den Bosch et al. 2007; Tinker et al. 2008), and in algorithms developed to identify galaxy groups and clusters in photometric or spectroscopic redshift surveys (e.g., Yang et al. 2005a, 2007; Berlind et al. 2006; Koester et al. 2007).”
• The accretion of galaxies into groups and clusters (2009, result): “This compares very well with observational results: Berlind et al. (2006) found that ∼56 per cent of Mr < −20.5 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are linked to groups containing at least one other member, a result that is completely consistent with independent analysis using the 2dF…”
• The reversal of the star formation-density relation in the distant universe (2007, methodology): “The local comparison sample that we have produced using the SDSS dataset was limited to redshifts between z=0.04–0.1, where the SDSS spectroscopy is fairly complete to MB ≤-20 (see Berlind et al. 2006) with 19590 galaxies (Data Release 4 of the SDSS).”
• GALAXY GROUPS IN THE SDSS DR4. III. THE LUMINOSITY AND STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS (2008, methodology): “…mock galaxy redshift surveys have demonstrated that the group masses thus estimated can recover the true halo masses with a 1-σ deviation of ∼ 0.3 dex, and are more reliable than those based on the velocity dispersion of group members (Y05c; Weinmann et al. 2006; Berlind et al. 2006; Paper I).”
• The dark side of galaxy colour (2013, methodology): “Galaxy groups are constructed from the Mr19 galaxy sample described in § 2.1 according to the methods discussed in Berlind et al. (2006).”
• A GMBCG GALAXY CLUSTER CATALOG OF 55,424 RICH CLUSTERS FROM SDSS DR7 (2010, methodology): “This color information is the primary tool to determine the 1When spectroscopic redshifts are available, other algorithms have been developed, for example, Berlind et al. (2006); Yang et al. (2007); Miller et al. (2005).”
• Galaxy Groups in the SDSS DR4. I. The Catalog and Basic Properties (2007, methodology): “…have also been constructed from the redshift samples selected from the on-going Sloan Digital Sky Survey (hereafter SDSS): Goto (2005) and Berlind et al. (2006) used a friends-of-friends (FOF) algorithm to identify groups in the SDSS Data Release 2 (DR2; Abazajian et al. 2004), Miller et…”
• A MaxBCG Catalog of 13,823 Galaxy Clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2007, background): “In addition to these photometrically selected catalogs, several group and cluster catalogs have been assembled from spectroscopic data, for example Miller et al. (2005), Berlind et al. (2006), and Weinmann et al. (2006).”
• CALIFA : a diameter-selected sample for an integral field spectroscopy galaxy survey (2014, background): “…in the literature (White et al. 1997; Aguerri et al. 2007; Hernández-Fernández et al. 2012; Mahdavi & Geller 2001; Miller et al. 2005; Popesso et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008; Garcia 1993; Mahtessian & Movsessian 2010; Tago et al. 2010; Crook et al. 2007; Mahdavi & Geller 2004; Berlind et al. 2006).”
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): the GAMA galaxy group catalogue (G3Cv1) (2011, background): “…Abell 1958; Zwicky et al. 1961), but more recently significant effort has been devoted to robustly detecting grouped structures (e.g. Huchra & Geller 1982; Moore, Frenk & White 1993; Eke et al. 2004; Gerke et al. 2005; Yang et al. 2005; Berlind et al. 2006; Brough et al. 2006; Knobel et al. 2009).”