Luminous Elliptical Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Large-Scale Structure and Galaxy Evolution

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This research will use a specially-targeted subsample of luminous elliptical galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to probe the galaxy distribution power spectrum on large scales, and to study the evolution of massive galaxies. The sample is called the "Bright Red Galaxy Sample," consisting of roughly 100,000 galaxies out to a redshift of 0.5, and is designed so that galaxies at low and high redshift should have similar intrinsic properties. The goals are to determine precision constraints from large-scale structure on the low-redshift balance of matter, cosmological constant, and spatial curvature. These results will complement those from cosmic microwave background anisotropies and distant supernovae and should contribute substantially to the construction of a well-tested cosmological model.