The one-point PDF of the initial conditions of our local Universe from the IRAS PSC redshift catalogue |
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Authors: | P. Monaco G. Efstathiou S. J. Maddox E. Branchini C. S. Frenk R. G. McMahon S. J. Oliver M. Rowan-Robinson W. Saunders W. J. Sutherland H. Tadros S. D. M. White |
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Affiliation: | Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universitàdi Trieste, via Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy;Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA;Kapteyn Sterrewacht, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Postbus 800, 9700, AV Groningen, the Netherlands;Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE;Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ;Institute for Astronomy, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3RJ;Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH;MPI-Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1, Garching bei Munchen, Germany D-85740 |
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Abstract: | The algorithm ztrace of Monaco & Efstathiou is applied to the IRAS PSCz catalogue to reconstruct the initial conditions of our local Universe with a resolution down to ~5 h 1 Mpc. The one-point probability distribution function (PDF) of the reconstructed initial conditions is consistent with the assumptions that: (i) IRAS galaxies trace mass on scales of ~5 h 1 Mpc and (ii) the statistics of the primordial density fluctuations are Gaussian. We use simulated PSCz catalogues, constructed from N -body simulations with Gaussian initial conditions, to show that local non-linear bias can cause the recovered initial PDF (assuming no bias) to be non-Gaussian. However, for plausible bias models, the distortions of the recovered PDF would be difficult to detect using the volume finely sampled by the PSCz catalogue. So, for Gaussian initial conditions, a range of bias models remain compatible with our PSCz reconstruction results. |
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Keywords: | galaxies: distances and redshifts galaxies: statistics cosmology: theory large-scale structure of Universe |
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