# OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE FOR STOCHASTIC BIASING

## 1. INTRODUCTION

Measurements of clustering in upcoming galaxy redshift surveys hold the potential of measuring cosmological parameters with great accuracy (Tegmark 1997; Goldberg & Strauss 1997), especially when complemented by measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Eisenstein et al. 1998; Hu et al. 1998ab). Since such measurements are only as accurate as our understanding of biasing, there has been a recent burst of work on the relation between the distribution of galaxies and the underlying mass.

Dekel and Lahav (1998; Dekel 1997 §5.5; Lahav 1996 §3.1) have proposed a robust framework termed “stochastic biasing”, which drops the assumption that the galaxy density $`\rho _g(𝐫)`$ is uniquely determined by the matter density $`\rho `$. Writing the corresponding density fluctuations as $`g\rho _g/\rho _g1`$ and $`\delta \rho /\rho 1`$, $`g`$ is modelled as a function of $`\delta `$ plus a random term. It has been known since the outset (e.g., Dressler 1980) that any deterministic biasing relation $`g=f(\delta )`$ must be complicated, depending on galaxy type. Even allowing this, however, deterministic biasing still implies that the peaks and troughs of the two fields must coincide spatially, which need not be the case. Restricting attention to second moments, all the information about both such stochasticity and nonlinearity (of $`f(\delta )`$) can be contained in a single new function $`r`$ (Pen 1998; Tegmark & Peebles 1998, hereafter TP98). Grouping the densities into a two-dimensional vector

$$𝐱\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{g}\right)$$
(1)   
and assuming nothing except translational invariance, its Fourier transform $`\widehat{𝐱}(𝐤)e^{i𝐤𝐫}𝐱(𝐫)d^3r`$ obeys

$$\widehat{𝐱}(𝐤)\widehat{𝐱}(𝐤^{})^{}=(2\pi )^3\delta ^D(𝐤𝐤^{})\left(\begin{array}{cc}P(𝐤)& P_\times (𝐤)\\ P_\times (𝐤)& P_g(𝐤)\end{array}\right)$$
(2)   
for some $`2\times 2`$ power spectrum matrix that we will denote $`𝐏(𝐤)`$. Here $`P`$ is the conventional power spectrum of the mass distribution, $`P_g`$ is the power spectrum of the galaxies, and $`P_\times `$ is the cross spectrum. It is convenient to rewrite this covariance matrix as

$$𝐏(𝐤)=P(𝐤)\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& b(𝐤)r(𝐤)\\ b(𝐤)r(𝐤)& b(𝐤)^2\end{array}\right)$$
(3)   
<sup>1</sup> Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540

<sup>2</sup> Hubble Fellow; max@ias.edu

<sup>3</sup> Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 

where $`b(P_g/P)^{1/2}`$ is the bias factor (the ratio of luminous and total fluctuations) and the new function $`rP_\times /(PP_g)^{1/2}`$ is the dimensionless correlation coefficient between galaxies and matter. The special case $`r=1`$ gives the simple deterministic biasing relation $`g=b\delta `$, however, both $`b`$ and $`r`$ may generally depend on scale.

Since the function $`r(k)`$ is a cosmologically important quantity, it has received much recent attention. Pen (1998) has shown how it can be measured using redshift space distortions and nonlinear effects, Scherrer & Weinberg (1998) have computed $`r`$ for a number of theoretical models, and Blanton et al. 1998 (hereafter B98) have estimated $`b`$ and $`r`$ from hydrodynamic simulations. TP98 have computed the time-evolution of bias in the linear regime, while Taruya et al. (1998ab) have generalized this result to the perturbatively non-linear case (see also Mo & White 1996; Mo et al. 1997; Matarrese et al. 1997; Bagla 1998; Catelan 1998ab; Colin et al. 1998; Lemsen & Sheth 1998; Moscardini et al. 1998; Porciani 1998; Wechsler et al. 1998). Some of these numerical and theoretical predictions have been borne out in observational data which indicate very high bias values ($`b46`$) at $`z3`$, decreasing rapidly with time (Giavalisco et al. 1998).

In light of all this activity, it would be timely to observationally measure $`r(k)`$. This is the topic of the present paper. Unfortunately, measuring $`r`$ directly requires knowledge of the true matter distribution $`\delta `$. Although this information in principle may be obtained from e.g. POTENT reconstruction from peculiar velocity measurements (Dekel et al. 1990), the quasilinear redshift-space method of Pen (1998) or gravitational lensing (Van Waerbeke 1998), it will likely require better data than is presently available since systematic errors in the estimate of $`\delta `$ masquerade as $`r<1`$. We therefore adopt an indirect approach, based on the following simple idea. If two different types of galaxies are both perfectly correlated with the matter, then they must also be perfectly correlated with each other. If we can demonstrate imperfect correlations between two galaxy subsamples then we will have shown that $`r<1`$ for at least one of them. We show that $`r<1`$ at high statistical significance, and place quantitative limits on $`r`$ in §3.

## 2. Ruling out simple biasing

We base our analysis on galaxies in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS; Schectman et al. 1996) grouped into 6 types or “clans” according to the spectral classification scheme of Bromley et al. (1998ab), ranging from very early-type galaxies (clan 1) to late-type objects (clan 6). To reduce shot noise we define our clan 4 as the combination of the original clans 4, 5 and 6. The clustering properties of these clans vary in a systematic way, revealing a progression in the relative bias factors $`b`$ – see also Santiago & Strauss (1992). B98 predict that $`r`$ depends strongly on the formation epoch of a galaxy population, so one might suspect that some of the LCRS clans have $`r<1`$.

FIG. 1 — The four subsamples (clans) of the LCRS. 

The LCRS consists of $`n_f=327`$ rectangular fields in the sky, and we further subdivide the volume into $`n_s=10`$ radial shells in the range 10 000 km/s$`<cz<`$45 000 km/s. Discarding galaxies outside of this redshift range (as in Lin et al. 1996) leaves 519, 8282, 5152 and 5669 galaxies in the four clans. For each of our $`nn_f\times n_s`$ spatial volumes $`V_\alpha `$ ($`\alpha =1,\mathrm{},n`$) and each clan $`i=1,\mathrm{},n_c`$, we count the number of observed galaxies $`N_\alpha ^{(i)}`$, and compute the expected number of galaxies $`\overline{N}_\alpha ^{(i)}`$ using the selection function of Lin et al. (1996) with the clan-dependent Schechter parameters of Bromley et al. (1998a). We write the map of observed density fluctuations for the $`i^{th}`$ clan as an $`n`$-dimensional vector $`𝐠^{(i)}`$, defined by $`g_\alpha ^{(i)}N_\alpha ^{(i)}/\overline{N}_\alpha ^{(i)}1`$. In a simple $`r=1`$ linear biasing model, we would have

$$g_\alpha ^{(i)}=b_i\delta _\alpha +\epsilon _\alpha ^{(i)},$$
(4)   
where $`b_i`$ is the bias of the $`i^{th}`$ clan, $`\delta _\alpha `$ is the matter density fluctuation in $`V_\alpha `$ and the shot noise contributions $`\epsilon _\alpha ^{(i)}`$ have zero mean and a diagonal covariance matrix

$$𝐍_{\alpha \beta }^{(i)}\epsilon _\alpha ^{(i)}\epsilon _\beta ^{(i)}=\delta _{\alpha \beta }/\overline{N}_\alpha ^{(i)}.$$
(5)   
Can we rule this out? For a pair of clans $`i`$ and $`j`$, consider the difference map

$$\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠𝐠^{(i)}f𝐠^{(j)}.$$
(6)   
for different values of the factor $`f`$. If $`f=b_i/b_j`$, then equation (4) shows that the (unknown) matter density fluctuations $`\delta _\alpha `$ will cancel out, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠`$ will consist of mere shot noise whose covariance matrix is $`𝐍\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠^t=𝐍^{(i)}+f^2𝐍^{(j)}`$.

Given the alternative hypothesis that there is a residual signal with some covariance matrix $`\mathrm{SS}`$, so that $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠^t=𝐍+\mathrm{SS}`$, the most powerful “null-buster” test for ruling out the null hypothesis $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠^t=𝐍`$ is using the generalized $`\chi ^2`$-statistic (Tegmark 1998)

$$\nu \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠^t𝐍^1\mathrm{SS}𝐍^1\mathrm{\Delta }𝐠\text{tr}𝐍^1\mathrm{SS}}{\left[2\text{tr}\left\{𝐍^1\mathrm{SS}𝐍^1\mathrm{SS}\right\}\right]^{1/2}},$$
(7)   
which can be interpreted as the number of “sigmas” at which the noise-only null hypothesis is ruled out. We choose $`\mathrm{SS}_{\alpha \beta }=\xi (|𝐫_\alpha 𝐫_\beta |)`$, where $`𝐫_\alpha `$ is the center of volume $`V_\alpha `$ and $`\xi `$ is the correlation function measured by the LCRS (Tucker et al. 1997). We plot the results in Figure 2 for three pairs of clans $`i`$ and $`j`$, and the corresponding valley-shaped curve tells us a number of things. The fact that $`\nu 1`$ on the left-hand-side (as $`f0`$, with all the weight on clan $`i`$) means that there is a strong detection of cosmological fluctuations above the shot noise level $`(\nu 1)`$. Likewise, $`\nu 1`$ on the right-hand-side (as $`f\mathrm{}`$), which demonstrates cosmological signal in clan $`j`$. The fact that the curve dips for intermediate $`f`$-values tells us that the two density maps are correlated $`(r>0)`$ and have common signal. The minimum is attained at the value $`f`$ which gives the best fit relative bias $`b_i/b_j`$ for this common signal. However, the fact that $`\nu 1`$ even at the minimum proves that even though some signal is shared in common, not all of it is: there are no values of $`b_i`$ for which equation (4) can hold for any pair of clans $`i`$ and $`j`$.

Note that Figure 2 does not directly tell us which clans are most correlated, since low minima can signal either strong correlations, low fluctuations or high shot noise — the latter being the case for the (rare) $`1^{st}`$ clan.

FIG. 2 — Significance at which we can rule out that different clan pairs are perfectly correlated (that $`𝐠^{(i)}f𝐠^{(j)}`$ is pure shot noise). 

3. MEASURING $`r(k)`$

Having ruled out non-stochastic linear biasing, i.e., demonstrated that $`r<1`$ for some clans, let us now study in more detail what constraints can be placed on $`r`$.

### 3.1. Upper limits on $`r`$

Let us lengthen the 2-dimensional vector $`𝐱=(\delta ,g)`$ from equation (1) to an $`(1+n_c)`$-dimensional vector including all $`n_c`$ galaxy clans ($`n_c=4`$): $`x_0=\delta `$ and $`x_i=g^{(i)}`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},n_c`$, i.e., $`𝐱=(\delta ,g^{(1)},g^{(2)},g^{(3)},g^{(4)})`$. Next we factor the $`(1+n_c)\times (1+n_c)`$ covariance matrix $`𝐏\mathrm{𝐱𝐱}^t`$ as $`𝐏_{ij}=\sigma _i\sigma _j𝐑_{ij}`$, where $`\sigma _i𝐏_{ii}^{1/2}`$ is the rms fluctuation of the $`i^{th}`$ component and $`𝐑_{ij}𝐏_{ij}/\sigma _i\sigma _j`$ is the dimensionless correlation matrix. The components $`r_iR_{0i}`$ clearly correspond to the correlations we discussed earlier, except that there is now one $`r`$ for each clan, a vector of correlations $`𝐫`$. These are the numbers we are interested in, although all we can measure directly are the remaining degrees of freedom in $`𝐑`$, the galaxy-galaxy correlation matrix $`𝐐`$ (the $`n_c\times n_c`$ submatrix in the lower right corner). What constraints can we place? Consider first the simpler case involving only $`n_c=2`$ two clans. Then

$$𝐑=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\text{1}& 𝐫^t\\ 𝐫& \text{Q}\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\text{1}& r_1& r_2\\ r_1& \text{1}& \rho \\ r_2& \rho & \text{1}\end{array}\right),$$
(8)   
where $`\rho `$ denotes the one number that we can measure: the correlation between clans 1 and 2. Since a correlation matrix cannot have negative eigenvalues, $`det𝐑0`$. After some algebra, this gives the constraint

$$|r_1\rho r_2|\left[(1\rho ^2)(1r_2^2)\right]^{1/2}.$$
(9)   
Thus the larger we make $`r_2`$, the more tightly constrained $`r_1`$ becomes, and vice versa. If $`r_2=1`$, then the right hand side vanishes, forcing $`r_1=\rho `$. This gives an upper bound on the smaller of $`r_1`$ and $`r_2`$. The most weakly constrained case is clearly $`r_1=r_2`$, so we obtain

$$\text{min}\{r_1,r_2\}\left[\frac{1+\rho }{2}\right]^{1/2}.$$
(10)   
For the case with $`n_c=4`$ clans, we get analogous inequalities for each of the $`n_c(n_c+1)/2=10`$ pairs of clans. Additional more complicated constraints follow from requiring a nonnegative determinant for all $`4\times 4`$-submatrices and for the whole $`5\times 5`$ matrix, although these will not be considered here.

Table 1. Correlations and relative bias for the four galaxy clans.

| $`i`$ | $`b_i/b_4`$ | Galaxy correlation matrix $`𝐐`$ | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 2.97$`\pm .04`$ | 1 | .63$`\pm `$.02 | .44$`\pm `$.02 | .42$`\pm `$.03 |
| 2 | 1.28$`\pm .01`$ | .63$`\pm `$.02 | 1 | .88$`\pm `$.02 | .81$`\pm `$.02 |
| 3 | 1.21$`\pm .01`$ | .44$`\pm `$.02 | .88$`\pm `$.02 | 1 | .76$`\pm `$.03 |
| 4 | 1.00$`\pm .01`$ | .42$`\pm `$.03 | .81$`\pm `$.02 | .76$`\pm `$.03 | 1 |

### 3.2. Measuring the galaxy correlation matrix

$`𝐐_{ij}=𝐆_{ij}/(𝐆_{ii}𝐆_{jj})^{1/2}`$, where $`𝐆`$ is the $`n_c\times n_c`$ galaxy-galaxy covariance matrix (the bottom right submatrix of $`𝐏`$). Based on the analysis of Tegmark et al. (1998, hereafter T98), we compute an estimate $`𝐆`$ of the form $`𝐆_{ij}𝐠_{}^{(i)}{}_{}{}^{t}\mathrm{𝐄𝐠}^{(j)}`$ minus shot noise, removed as in Appendix B of T98 by simply omitting self-pairs. The pair weighting is given by a matrix $`𝐄𝐍^1\mathrm{𝐅𝐍}^1`$, where $`𝐍`$ is some typical shot noise covariance matrix – since it is different for each clan, we use the average $`𝐍=n_c^1_i𝐍^{(i)}`$ as a compromise. We make the choice $`𝐅=𝐈`$, which corresponds to measuring the $`rms`$ fluctuations in the cells. Computing the window function $`W`$, defined by $`𝐆_{ij}=𝐏_{ij}(k)W(k)d^3k`$, we find that $`𝐆_{ij}`$ mainly probes scales around $`\lambda 2\pi /k10h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

Converting $`𝐆`$ back to $`𝐐`$, we calculate error bars for its elements and all quantities derived below by generating $`10^4`$ Monte Carlo realizations of Poisson shot noise for $`N_\alpha ^{(i)}`$, adding this to the observed values and processing the result in exactly the same manner as the real data. Since our primary goal is to rule out $`r_i=1`$, we clearly do not care about sample variance in $`𝐐`$: if biasing were simple, one would measure $`r_i=1`$ in all samples. When reading Tables 1 and 2, the reader should thus bear in mind that the error bars reflect shot noise only. 

The results are shown in Table 1. The $`2^{nd}`$ column confirms that the clustering strength drops with clan number, as shown by Bromley et al. (1998a). All off-diagonal elements in the correlation matrix are seen to be significantly below unity, ranging from the $`88\%`$ correlation between clans 2 and 3 to a mere $`42\%`$ correlation between the earliest and latest galaxy types. Correlations generally decrease with separation in clan number, as expected. Applying equations (9) or (10) to this table gives a plethora of constraints on $`r_i`$. For example, equation (10) tells us that either $`r_1`$ or $`r_4`$ must be below $`\sqrt{(1+0.42)/2}84\%`$.

### 3.3. The matter as a principal component

Let $`\lambda _1\lambda _2\mathrm{}\lambda _{n_c}`$ be the eigenvalues of $`𝐆`$, sorted from largest to smallest, with $`𝐞_i`$ the corresponding unit eigenvectors ($`\mathrm{𝐆𝐞}_i=\lambda _i𝐞_i`$, $`𝐞_i𝐞_j=\delta _{ij}`$). It is instructive to decompose the fluctuation vector $`𝐱`$ into its uncorrelated principal components $`y_i𝐞_i𝐱`$:

$$𝐱=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n_c}{}}𝐞_iy_i,$$
(11)   
where $`y_iy_j=\delta _{ij}\lambda _i`$. If biasing were simple and linear, we would have $`𝐱=𝐛\delta `$ for some vector $`𝐛`$ of bias values $`b_i`$. Equation (11) would therefore have only one term, with $`𝐞_1𝐛`$ and $`y_1\delta `$. Additional terms in equation (11) would correspond to random physical processes, uncorrelated with $`\delta `$, that are pushing $`r_j`$ below unity. If we want a model with a minimal amount of stochasticity, we should therefore interpret the first (largest) principal component as tracing the underlying matter distribution, i.e., assume that $`\delta =ay_1=a𝐞_1^t𝐱`$ for some constant $`a`$. Since $`\mathrm{𝐱𝐱}^t=𝐆`$, this assumption gives $`𝐱\delta =a\mathrm{𝐱𝐱}^t𝐞_1=a\mathrm{𝐆𝐞}_1=a\lambda _1𝐞_1`$, $`\delta ^2=a^2𝐞_1^t\mathrm{𝐱𝐱}^t𝐞_1=a^2𝐞_1^t\mathrm{𝐆𝐞}_1=a^2\lambda _1`$, and hence the correlation coefficients

$$r_j=\frac{x_j\delta }{\left[x_j^2\delta ^2\right]^{1/2}}=\sqrt{\frac{\lambda _1}{𝐆_{jj}}}(𝐞_1)_j.$$
(12)   
These coefficients are shown in the last row of Table 2. The fraction of the variance of clan $`j`$ that is caused by matter fluctuations is $`(𝐞_1)_j^2y_1^2/x_j^2=(𝐞_1)_j^2\lambda _1/𝐆_{jj}=r_j^2`$, simply the square of the correlation coefficient, so this is a useful way to interpret $`r_j`$.

Table 2 is indeed consistent with the hypothesis that the first principal component traces the matter: since all of its four components (boldface) have the same sign, we can interpret them as the (relative) bias factors that the clans would have if there were no randomness ($`\lambda _2=\lambda _3=\lambda _4=0`$). Since $`(𝐞_1)_j𝐆_{jj}^{1/2}b_jr_j`$, we can also interpret them as the best fit slopes in linear regressions of $`x_j`$ against $`\delta `$, the quantity that Dekel & Lahav (1998) call simply “$`b`$”. The sharp decrease of $`(𝐞_1)_j`$ towards later clan types (their ratios are $`5.1:1.7:1.3:1`$) is thus caused by the joint decrease of both the measured relative bias $`b_j`$ (the $`2^{nd}`$ column of Table 1) and the correlation $`r_j`$ .

Table 2. Principal components decomposition of the fluctuations.    i $`\lambda _i`$ Components of eigenvector $`𝐞_i`$    1 .564$`\pm `$.013 .91$`\pm `$.01 .31$`\pm `$.01 .23$`\pm `$.01 .18$`\pm `$.01  2 .122$`\pm .004`$ -.41$`\pm `$.01 .51$`\pm `$.01 .60$`\pm `$.01 .46$`\pm `$.02  3 .016$`\pm .002`$ .01$`\pm `$.02 -.08$`\pm `$.13 -.56$`\pm `$.16 .82$`\pm `$.15  4 .008$`\pm .001`$ -.08$`\pm `$.01 .80$`\pm `$.03 -.52$`\pm `$.10 -0.28$`\pm `$.14  Clan correlation $`r_j`$ .98$`\pm `$.002 .77$`\pm `$.02 .60$`\pm `$.02 .57$`\pm `$.03   

## 4. Conclusions

Our basic conclusion is that bias is complicated. Rather than being describable by a single constant $`b_i`$ for the $`i^{th}`$ galaxy type, evidence is mounting that bias is

1. stochastic and/or nonlinear, requiring a $`2^{nd}`$ quantity $`r_i`$ to characterize $`2^{nd}`$ moments,
2. scale dependent ($`b_i`$ and $`r_i`$ depend on $`k`$),
3. time-dependent ($`b_i`$ and $`r_i`$ depend on redshift).

Complication (1) was predicted by Dekel & Lahav (1998), and we have observationally confirmed it here. Complication (2) has long been observed on small scales (see e.g. Mann et al. 1996, B98 and references therein), while Complication (3) was predicted by Fry (1996) and TP98 and is gathering support from both simulations (Katz et al. 1998; B98) and observations (Giavalisco et al. 1998).

However, this is not cause for despair. The scale dependence is predicted to abate on large scales (Scherrer & Weinberg 1998), and the time-evolution due to gravity is calculable (TP98). As long as we limit ourselves to second moments (power spectra etc.), stochasticity merely augments $`P_i(k)`$ and $`b_i(k)`$ with an additional function $`r_i(k)`$. Furthermore, our constraints on $`r_i`$ using galaxy data alone — without knowledge the underlying mass distribution — suggest strong regularities: The more similar two morphological types are, the stronger they are correlated.

More strikingly, our tentative identification of the $`1^{st}`$ principal component of the galaxy covariance matrix as the underlying matter distribution is in excellent agreement with the recent simulations of B98: galaxies with high bias are almost perfectly correlated with matter (we find $`r_198\%`$), whereas the less biased populations have weaker correlations (we find $`r60\%80\%`$). Thus matter clustering explains only $`r^240\%60\%`$ of the variance of these galaxies. 

This analysis is merely a first step towards observationally measuring the parameters of stochastic biasing. It remains to explore the scale-dependence and time-evolution of $`r`$ as well as probing higher-order moments of the joint distribution of galaxy types (e.g., Lahav & Saslaw 1992). However, our success in constraining $`r`$ in the absence of difficult mass measurements is an encouraging indication for the analyses of upcoming galaxy surveys: With the techniques presented here, along with theoretical and numerical modeling, it may be possible to understand bias well enough to realize the full potential of these surveys for measuring fundamental cosmological parameters.

We thank the LCRS team for kindly making their data public and John Bahcall, Michael Blanton, Avishai Dekel, Ofer Lahav, Jim Peebles and Uroš Seljak for useful discussions. MT was funded by NASA though grant NAG5-6034 and Hubble Fellowship HF-01084.01-96A from STScI, operated by AURA, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. BB was funded by NSF Grant PHY 95-07695 while at the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA and acknowledges computing support from NASA and the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research.