Testing gravity on large scales. The skewness of the galaxy distribution at z~1

Marinoni, C.; Guzzo, L.; Cappi, A.; Fevre, O. Le; Mazure, A.; Meneux, B.; Pollo, A.; Iovino, A.; McCracken, H. J.; Scaramella, R.; de la Torre, S.; Virey, J. M.; Bottini, D.; Garilli, B.; Brun, V. Le; Maccagni, D.; Picat, J. P.; Scodeggio, M.; Tresse, L.; Vettolani, G.; Zanichelli, A.; Adami, C.; Arnouts, S.; Bardelli, S.; Bolzonella, M.; Charlot, S.; Ciliegi, P.; Contini, T.; Foucaud, S.; Franzetti, P.; Gavignaud, I.; Ilbert, O.; Lamareille, F.; Marano, B.; Mathez, G.; Merighi, R.; Paltani, S.; Pellò, R.; Pozzetti, L.; Radovich, M.; Vergani, D.; Zamorani, G.; Zucca, E.; Abbas, U.; Bondi, M.; Bongiorno, A.; Brinchmann, J.; Buzzi, A.; Cucciati, O.; de Ravel, L.; Gregorini, L.; Mellier, Y.; Merluzzi, P.; Perez-Montero, E.; Taxil, P.; Temporin, S.; Walcher, C. J.

Testing gravity on large scales. The skewness of the galaxy distribution at z~1

Authors

Description

We study the evolution of the low-order moments of the galaxy overdensity distribution over the redshift interval 0.7<z<1.5. We find that the variance and the normalized skewness evolve over this redshift interval in a way that is remarkably consistent with predictions of first- and second-order perturbation theory. This finding confirms the standard gravitational instability paradigm over nearly 9 Gyrs of cosmic time and demonstrates the importance of accounting for the non-linear component of galaxy biasing to avoid disagreement between theory and observations.
To appear in the proceedings of 43rd Rencontres de Moriond on Cosmology (La Thuile, 2008)