Top: photometric redshift distribution of PAUS W3 (black solid), with spectroscopic redshifts of the DEEP2-matched galaxies (grey dashed), overlain with the randoms’ n(z), generated with and without the windowing (Sect. 3.2) and photo-z (‘zph-randoms’; Sect. 3.3) approaches, as indicated in the legend. Bottom: density contrast Δ(z) (Eq. (13)) computed after the final iteration of clone dispersal for each set of randoms – for zph-randoms, the ratio n_gal(z) / n_rand.(z) (Eq. (13)) is computed against galaxy redshifts drawn from n(z_spec. | z_phot.) (see Sect. 3.3), such that n_gal(z)≠n(z_phot.) and Δ(z) / N_clone can be greater than unity where n_rand.(z) > n(z_phot.), e.g., at z_phot. ∼ 1. Our zph-randoms methods yield smoother redshift distributions, more faithful to the available n(z_spec.). Red vertical lines delimit the redshift range employed in our correlation function analysis.