A study of the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the South Galactic Pole region -- II. Further evidence for a preferential clustering scale?

Abstract

We analyse a set of new pencil-beam galaxy redshift data in three small regions around the South Galactic Pole (SGP) area. We investigate whether we can find any evidence of the quasi-periodic peaks discovered by Broadhurst et al. (1990) in the distribution of galaxies along the NGP-SGP directions. We use both a power spectrum analysis and a cross-correlation with a sliding comb-like window (the comb-template technique). Despite the data are less deep (~600 h^{-1} Mpc) and certainly not optimal for such an investigation, there is evidence of the same preferential ~130 h^{-1} Mpc scale in two fields displaced respectively 15 and 30 degrees West of the Broadhurst et al. original probe. Taken alone, however, this peak would not be statistically distinguishable from a noise fluctuation. Nevertheless, the statistical significance of the detection raises to 99% when one considers the CONDITIONAL probability of finding a peak around THE SAME scale measured by Broadhurst et al.