We present the Early Data Release of the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey. The SAMI Galaxy Survey is an ongoing integral field spectroscopic survey of ~3400 low-redshift (z<0.12) galaxies, covering galaxies in
the field and in groups within the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey regions, and a sample of galaxies in clusters. In the Early Data Release, we publicly release the fully calibrated datacubes for a representative selection of 107 galaxies drawn from the GAMA regions, along with information about these galaxies from the GAMA catalogues. All datacubes for the Early Data Release galaxies can be downloaded individually or as a set from the SAMI Galaxy Survey website. In this paper we also assess the quality of the pipeline used to reduce the SAMI data, giving metrics that quantify its performance at all stages in processing the raw data into calibrated datacubes. The pipeline gives excellent results throughout, with typical sky subtraction residuals in the continuum of 0.9-1.2 per cent, a relative flux calibration uncertainty of 4.1 per cent (systematic) plus 4.3 per cent (statistical), and atmospheric dispersion removed with an accuracy of 0.09, less than a fifth of a spaxel.
We measure the width of the MgII $lambda2799$ line in quasar spectra from the SDSS, 2QZ and 2SLAQ surveys and, by invoking an unnormalised virial mass estimator, relate the scatter in line width to the scatter in mass in the underlying black hole pop
ulation. We find conclusive evidence for a trend such that there is less scatter in line width, and hence black hole mass, in more luminous objects. However, the most luminous objects in our sample show such a low degree of scatter in line width that, when combined with measures for the intrinsic scatter in the radius-luminosity relation for the broad-line region in active galaxies, an inconsistency arises in the virial technique for estimating black hole masses. This analysis implies that, at least for the most luminous quasars, either there is little-to-no intrinsic scatter in the radius-luminosity relation or the MgII broad emission line region is not totally dominated by virial velocities. Finally we exploit the measured scatter in line widths to constrain models for the velocity field of the broad-line region. We show that the lack of scatter in broad line-widths for luminous quasars is inconsistent with a pure planar/disk-like geometry for the broad-line region... (abridged)
We have measured the bias of QSOs as a function of QSO luminosity at fixed redshift (z<1) by cross-correlating them with LRGs in the same spatial volume, hence breaking the degeneracy between QSO luminosity and redshift. We use three QSO samples from
2SLAQ, 2QZ and SDSS covering a QSO absolute magnitude range, -24.5<M_{b_J}<-21.5, and cross-correlate them with 2SLAQ (z~0.5) and AAOmega (z~0.7) photometric and spectroscopic LRGs in the same redshift ranges. The 2-D and 3-D cross-clustering measurements are generally in good agreement. Our (2SLAQ) QSO-LRG clustering amplitude (r_0=6.8_{-0.3}^{+0.1}h^{-1}Mpc) as measured from the semi-projected cross-correlation function appears similar to the (2SLAQ) LRG-LRG auto-correlation amplitude (r_0=7.45pm0.35h^{-1}Mpc) and both are higher than the (2QZ+2SLAQ) QSO-QSO amplitude (r_0simeq5.0h^{-1}Mpc). Our measurements show remarkably little QSO-LRG cross-clustering dependence on QSO luminosity. If anything, the results imply that brighter QSOs may be less highly biased than faint QSOs, the opposite direction expected from simple high peaks biasing models. Assuming a standard LCDM model and values for b_{LRG} measured from LRG autocorrelation analyses, we find b_Q=1.45pm0.11 at M_{b_J}approx-24 and b_Q=1.90pm0.16 at M_{b_J}~-22. We also find consistent results for the QSO bias from a z-space distortion analysis of the QSO-LRG cross-clustering at z~0.55. The dynamical infall results give beta _Q=0.55pm0.10, implying b_Q=1.4pm0.2. Thus both the z-space distortion and the amplitude analyses yield b_Q~1.5 at M_{b_J}~-23. The implied DM halo mass inhabited by QSOs at z~0.55 is sim10^{13}h^{-1}M_{sun}, again approximately independent of QSO luminosity.
