No Arabic abstract
We present an update to the photometric calibration of the COMBO-17 catalogue on the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, which is now consistent with the GaBoDS and MUSYC catalogues. As a result, photometric redshifts become slightly more accurate, with <0.01 rms and little bias in the delta_z/(1+z) of galaxies with R<21 and of QSOs with R<24. With increasing photon noise the rms of galaxies reaches 0.02 for R<23 and 0.035 at R~23.5. Consequences for the rest-frame colours of galaxies at z<1 are discussed.
We present the COMBO-17 object catalogue of the Chandra Deep Field South for public use, covering a field which is 31.5 x 30 in size. This catalogue lists astrometry, photometry in 17 passbands from 350 to 930 nm, and ground-based morphological data for 63,501 objects. The catalogue also contains multi-colour classification into the categories Star, Galaxy and Quasar as well as photometric redshifts. We include restframe luminosities in Johnson, SDSS and Bessell passbands and estimated errors. The redshifts are most reliable at R<24, where the sample contains approximately 100 quasars, 1000 stars and 10000 galaxies. We use nearly 1000 spectroscopically identified objects in conjunction with detailed simulations to characterize the performance of COMBO-17. We show that the selection of quasars, more generally type-1 AGN, is nearly complete and minimally contaminated at z=[0.5,5] for luminosities above M_B=-21.7. Their photometric redshifts are accurate to roughly 5000 km/sec. Galaxy redshifts are accurate to 1% in dz/(1+z) at R<21. They degrade in quality for progressively fainter galaxies, reaching accuracies of 2% for galaxies with R~222 and of 10% for galaxies with R>24. The selection of stars is complete to R~23, and deeper for M stars. We also present an updated discussion of our classification technique with maps of survey completeness, and discuss possible failures of the statistical classification in the faint regime at R>24.
We have mapped the AGN luminosity function and its evolution between z=1 and z=5 down to apparent magnitudes of $R<24$. Within the GEMS project we have analysed HST-ACS images of many AGN in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, enabling us to assess the evolution of AGN host galaxy properties with cosmic time.
We present the first application of the 3D cosmic shear method developed in Heavens et al. (2006) and the geometric shear-ratio analysis developed in Taylor et al. (2006), to the COMBO-17 data set. 3D cosmic shear has been used to analyse galaxies with redshift estimates from two random COMBO-17 fields covering 0.52 square degrees in total, providing a conditional constraint in the (sigma_8, Omega_m) plane as well as a conditional constraint on the equation of state of dark energy, parameterised by a constant w= p/rho c^2. The (sigma_8, Omega_m) plane analysis constrained the relation between sigma_8 and Omega_m to be sigma_8(Omega_m/0.3)^{0.57 +- 0.19}=1.06 +0.17 -0.16, in agreement with a 2D cosmic shear analysis of COMBO-17. The 3D cosmic shear conditional constraint on w using the two random fields is w=-1.27 +0.64 -0.70. The geometric shear-ratio analysis has been applied to the A901/2 field, which contains three small galaxy clusters. Combining the analysis from the A901/2 field, using the geometric shear-ratio analysis, and the two random fields, using 3D cosmic shear, w is conditionally constrained to w=-1.08 +0.63 -0.58. The errors presented in this paper are shown to agree with Fisher matrix predictions made in Heavens et al. (2006) and Taylor et al. (2006). When these methods are applied to large datasets, as expected soon from surveys such as Pan-STARRS and VST-KIDS, the dark energy equation of state could be constrained to an unprecedented degree of accuracy.
We present a 3-dimensional lensing analysis of the z=0.16 supercluster A901/2, resulting in a 3-D map of the dark matter distribution within a 3 X 10^{5} [Mpc]^3 volume from the COMBO-17 survey. We perform a chi^2-fit of isothermal spheres to the tangential shear pattern around each cluster as a function of redshift to estimate the 3-D positions and masses of the main clusters in the supercluster from lensing alone. We then present the first 3-D map of the dark matter gravitational potential field, Phi, using the Kaiser-Squires (1993) and Taylor (2001) inversion methods. These maps clearly show the potential wells of the main supercluster components, including a new cluster behind A902, and demonstrates the applicability of 3-D dark matter mapping and projection free-mass-selected cluster finding to current data. Finally, we develop the halo model of dark matter and galaxy clustering and compare this with the auto-and cross-correlation functions of the 3-D gravitational potential, galaxy number densities and galaxy luminosity densities measured in the A901/2 field. We find significant anti-correlations between the gravitational potential field and the galaxy number density and luminosities, as expected due to baryonic infall into dark matter concentrations. We find good agreement with the halo model for the number densities and luminosity correlation functions.
We present a morphological study of galaxies in the A901/902 supercluster from the COMBO-17 survey. A total of 570 galaxies with photometric redshifts in the range 0.155 < z_phot < 0.185 are visually classified by three independent classifiers to M_V=-18. These morphological classifications are compared to local galaxy density, distance from the nearest cluster centre, local surface mass density from weak lensing, and photometric classification. At high local galaxy densities, log(Sigma_10 /Mpc^2) > 1.5, a classical morphology-density relation is found. A correlation is also found between morphology and local projected surface mass density, but no trend is observed with distance to the nearest cluster. This supports the finding that local environment is more important to galaxy morphology than global cluster properties. The breakdown of the morphological catalogue by colour shows a dominance of blue galaxies in the galaxies displaying late-type morphologies and a corresponding dominance of red galaxies in the early-type population. Using the 17-band photometry from COMBO-17, we further split the supercluster red sequence into old passive galaxies and galaxies with young stars and dust according to the prescription of Wolf et al. (2005). We find that the dusty star-forming population describes an intermediate morphological group between late-type and early-type galaxies, supporting the hypothesis that field and group spiral galaxies are transformed into S0s and, perhaps, ellipticals during cluster infall.