The VIMOS VLT deep survey

Free access article

Issue		A&A Volume 439, Number 3, September I 2005


Page(s)		877 - 885
Section		Cosmology (including clusters of galaxies)
DOI		http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20041962

A&A 439, 877-885 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20041962

The evolution of galaxy clustering to z $\simeq$ 2 from first epoch observations

O. Le Fèvre¹, L. Guzzo², B. Meneux¹, A. Pollo², A. Cappi³, S. Colombi⁴, A. Iovino², C. Marinoni^{1, 2}, H. J. McCracken^{4, 5}, R. Scaramella⁶, D. Bottini⁷, B. Garilli⁷, V. Le Brun¹, D. Maccagni⁷, J. P. Picat⁸, M. Scodeggio⁷, L. Tresse¹, G. Vettolani⁹, A. Zanichelli⁹, C. Adami¹, M. Arnaboldi¹⁰, S. Arnouts¹, S. Bardelli³, J. Blaizot¹, M. Bolzonella¹¹, S. Charlot^{4, 12}, P. Ciliegi⁹, T. Contini⁸, S. Foucaud⁷, P. Franzetti⁷, I. Gavignaud^{8, 13}, O. Ilbert^{1, 3}, B. Marano¹¹, G. Mathez⁸, A. Mazure¹, R. Merighi³, S. Paltani¹, R. Pellò⁸, L. Pozzetti³, M. Radovich¹⁰, G. Zamorani³, E. Zucca³, M. Bondi⁹, A. Bongiorno¹¹, G. Busarello¹⁰, F. Lamareille⁸, Y. Mellier^{4, 5}, P. Merluzzi¹⁰, V. Ripepi¹⁰ and D. Rizzo^{8, 2}

¹ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, UMR 6110 CNRS-Université de Provence, Traverse du Siphon, BP 8, 13012 Marseille, France
e-mail: olivier.lefevre@oamp.fr
² INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20121 Milan, Italy
³ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
⁴ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, 98bis Bd. Arago, 75014 Paris, France
⁵ Observatoire de Paris, LERMA, UMR 8112, 61 Av. de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
⁶ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy
⁷ INAF - IASF, via Bassini, 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
⁸ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, UMR 5572, 14 Av. Ed. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁹ INAF - Istituto di Radio-Astronomia, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
¹⁰ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, via Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
¹¹ Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
¹² Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, 85741 Garching, Germany
¹³ European Southern Observatory, Karl Schwarzschild Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany

(Received 6 September 2004 / Accepted 11 April 2005 )

Abstract
This paper presents the evolution of the clustering of the main population of galaxies from $z\simeq2$ to z=0.2, from the first epoch VIMOS VLT Deep Survey (VVDS), a magnitude limited sample with $17.5 \leq I_{AB} \leq 24$ . The sample allows a direct estimate of evolution from within the same survey over the time base sampled. We have computed the correlation functions $\xi(r_{\rm p},\pi)$ and $w_{\rm p}(r_{\rm p})$ , and the correlation length r₀(z), for the VVDS-02h and VVDS-CDFS fields, for a total of 7155 galaxies in a 0.61 deg² area. We find that the correlation length in this sample slightly increases from z=0.5 to z=1.1, with r₀(z)=2.2-2.9 h^-1 Mpc (comoving), for galaxies comparable in luminosity to the local 2dFGRS and SDSS samples, indicating that the amplitude of the correlation function was $\simeq$ 2.5 times lower at $z\simeq1$ than observed locally. The correlation length in our lowest redshift bin z=[0.2, 0.5] is r₀=2.2 h^-1 Mpc, lower than for any other population at the same redshift, indicating the low clustering of very low luminosity galaxies, 1.5 mag fainter than in the 2dFGRS or SDSS. The correlation length increases to $r_0\sim3.6$ h^-1 Mpc at higher redshifts z=[1.3, 2.1], as we are observing increasingly brighter galaxies, comparable to galaxies with M_{B_AB}=-20.5 locally. We compare our measurement to the DEEP2 measurements in the range z=[0.7, 1.35] (Coil et al. 2004, ApJ, in press) and find comparable results when applying the same magnitude and color selection criteria as in their survey.

The slowly varying clustering of VVDS galaxies as redshift increases is markedly different from the predicted evolution of the clustering of dark matter, indicating that bright galaxies traced higher density peaks when the large scale structures were emerging from the dark matter distribution 9-10 billion years ago, being supporting evidence for a strong evolution of the galaxy vs. dark matter bias.

Key words: surveys -- galaxies: evolution -- cosmology: large scale structure of Universe

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