The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). An unbiased estimate of the growth rate of structure at ⟨z⟩ = 0.85 using the clustering of luminous blue galaxies

F.G. Mohammad , B.R. Granett , L. Guzzo , J. Bel (1) , E. Branchini , S. de La Torre (2) , L. Moscardini , J.A. Peacock , M. Bolzonella , B. Garilli , M. Scodeggio , U. Abbas , C. Adami (2) , D. Bottini , A. Cappi (3) , O. Cucciati , I. Davidzon (2) , P. Franzetti , A. Fritz , A. Iovino , J. Krywult , V. Le Brun (2) , O. Le Fèvre (2) , D. Maccagni , K. Małek (2) , F. Marulli , M. Polletta (4, 5) , A. Pollo , L.A. M. Tasca (2) , R. Tojeiro , D. Vergani , A. Zanichelli , S. Arnouts (2) , J. Coupon , G. de Lucia , O. Ilbert (2) , T. Moutard (2)

1 CPT - Centre de Physique Théorique - UMR 7332
2 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
3 LAGRANGE - Joseph Louis LAGRANGE
4 AMU - Aix Marseille Université
5 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie

We used the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) final data release (PDR-2) to investigate the performance of colour-selected populations of galaxies as tracers of linear large-scale motions. We empirically selected volume-limited samples of blue and red galaxies as to minimise the systematic error on the estimate of the growth rate of structure fσ8 from the anisotropy of the two-point correlation function. To this end, rather than rigidly splitting the sample into two colour classes we defined the red or blue fractional contribution of each object through a weight based on the (U − V ) colour distribution. Using mock surveys that are designed to reproduce the observed properties of VIPERS galaxies, we find the systematic error in recovering the fiducial value of fσ8 to be minimised when using a volume-limited sample of luminous blue galaxies. We modelled non-linear corrections via the Scoccimarro extension of the Kaiser model (with updated fitting formulae for the velocity power spectra), finding systematic errors on fσ8 of below 1–2%, using scales as small as 5 h−1 Mpc. We interpret this result as indicating that selection of luminous blue galaxies maximises the fraction that are central objects in their dark matter haloes; this in turn minimises the contribution to the measured ξ(rp,π) from the 1-halo term, which is dominated by non-linear motions. The gain is inferior if one uses the full magnitude-limited sample of blue objects, consistent with the presence of a significant fraction of blue, fainter satellites dominated by non-streaming, orbital velocities. We measured a value of fσ8 = 0.45 ± 0.11 over the single redshift range 0.6 ≤ z ≤ 1.0, corresponding to an effective redshift for the blue galaxies ⟨z⟩=0.85. Including in the likelihood the potential extra information contained in the blue-red galaxy cross-correlation function does not lead to an appreciable improvement in the error bars, while it increases the systematic error.Key words: cosmology: observations / large-scale structure of Universe / galaxies: high-redshift / galaxies: statistics e-mail: [e-mail]

Mots clés: cosmology: observations; large-scale structure of Universe; galaxies: high-redshift; galaxies: statistics

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]

F.G. Mohammad, B.R. Granett, L. Guzzo, J. Bel, E. Branchini, et al.. The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). An unbiased estimate of the growth rate of structure at ⟨z⟩ = 0.85 using the clustering of luminous blue galaxies. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2018, 610, pp.A59. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201731685⟩. ⟨hal-01725000⟩