THE LAS CAMPANAS DISTANT CLUSTER SURVEY CORRELATION FUNCTION

摘要

We present the first nonlocal (z > 0.2) measurement of the cluster-cluster spatial correlation length, using data from the Las Campanas Distant Cluster Survey (LCDCS). We measure the angular correlation function for velocity dispersion-limited subsamples of the catalog at estimated redshifts of 0.35 ≤ z_(est) < 0.575 and derive spatial correlation lengths for these clusters via the cosmological Limber equation. The correlation lengths that we measure for clusters in the LCDCS are consistent both with local results for the APM cluster catalog and with theoretical expectations based upon the Virgo Consortium Hubble Volume simulations and the analytic predictions. Despite samples containing over 100 flusters, our ability to discriminate between cosmological models is limited because of statistical uncertainty.