Method for analyzing the spatial distribution of galaxies on gigaparsec scales. I. initial principles

The initial principles of a method for analyzing the spatial distribution of visible matter in the universe with structures on size scales of thousands of Mpc are discussed. This method is based on analyzing the distribution N(z) of the photometric redshifts of galaxies in deep fields using large bins Δ z=0.1–0.3. Fluctuations in the numbers of galaxies in these bins in terms of redshifts are caused by Poisson noise, correlated structures, and systematic errors in estimating photo-z. This method involves covering a sufficiently large region of the celestial sphere with a grid of deep multi-band surveys with a cell size on the order of 10º×10º, with deep fields of size ～10'×10' observed with 3-10 meter telescopes at its nodes. The distribution of the photometric redshifts of the galaxies within each deep field will yield information on the radial extent of superlarge structures, while comparing the radial distributions in neighboring fields will yield information on the tangential extent of these structures. A necessary element of this method is an analysis of possible distortions in the radial distributions of the galaxies associated with the technique for evaluating the photometric redshifts.