Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Daily Paper #7: Galaxy groups in the 2dFGRS: the number density of groups

Title: Galaxy groups in the 2dFGRS: the number density of groups
Authors: Eke, Baugh, Cole et al.
Year: 2006, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006MNRAS.370.1147E
The authors determine the galaxy groups mass and luminosity functions from 2dFGRS Percolation-Inferred Galaxy Group (2PIGG) catalogue (getting about 29 000 groups). The catalogue and the mock catalogues used to determine and correct for bias are described in Eke 2004 paper.
They obtain dynamical masses of the clusters (I think they use the words 'cluster' and 'group' interchangeably here) from their velocity dispersions, and obtain their luminosities by simply adding up the members' luminosities with weighting to account for spectroscopic incompleteness and galaxies below the flux limit. Then they correct the mass and luminosity functions using the Vmax method. However, they claim that a more robust way to determine the group mass function is deriving it from the luminosity function by multiplying it by a mass-to-light ratio. They also show that the total group luminosity function depends on the group finding algorithm used.
The main goal of the article is to determine the \sigma_8 parameter, but they make a comparison between halo velocities and circular velocities, claiming that the two are similar. The authors claim it is possible to convert a halo luminosity to its circular rotation velocity directly, then convert group luminosities (which are very similar to those of the brightest galaxy of the group) to circular velocities using Bell & de Jong B-band TF relation, and compare the two (see the attached figure).


I think it is an important article, because it is observational, and worth citing while discussing the halo/galaxy velocities issue (the ratio of v_c/v_200 is around 1.2, at least from the simulations, not close to 1 as they find here). Anyway, I'll remember this article in case I have enough time to work on the velocity function.

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