[59.01] The Void Distribution Function for the LCRS Data

AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 59. Structure in and at Clusters of Galaxies
Oral, Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 10:00-11:30am, 606-607

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[59.01U] The Void Distribution Function for the LCRS Data

C.M. Brown, S.P. Bhavsar (U. Kentucky)

The most obvious large-scale structures in the universe are the filaments of galaxies and voids. Whereas large scale distributions of galaxies have been studied extensively, the distribution function for voids has not received nearly the attention that this topic deserves. Therefore we developed a method of describing polygonal voids from point data sets. We applied this to the Las Campanas Redshift Survey [LCRS], identifying the voids in the six LCRS slices. These voids were statistically analyzed with regard to size, shape, topology, and spatial correlation. It was found that the void distribution was consistent between data slices and deviated significantly from Poisson distributions. Results of this analysis will be presented by showing the quantitative area and shape distribution functions and the void-void correlation. Predictions for the size of the largest voids in the Sloan survey have been made from this analysis.

We would like to acknowledge the University of Kentucky's Research and Creativity Grant for helping fund this project.

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