Large-scale QSO-galaxy correlations for radio-loud and optically selected QSO samples

We have studied the distribution of B-J < 20.5 galaxies from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh/Naval Research Laboratory COSMOS/UKST catalog around two samples of z > 0.3 QSOs with similar redshift distributions. The first sample is formed by 144 radio-loud QSOs from the Parkes catalog (PKS), and the other contains 167 optically selected QSOs extracted from the Large Bright Quasar Survey (LBQS). It is found that there is a approximate to 99.0% significance level excess of COSMOS/UKST galaxies around the PKS QSOs, whereas there is a marginal defect of galaxies around the LBQS QSOs. When the distribution of galaxies around both samples is compared, we find that there is an overdensity of galaxies around the PKS sample with respect to the LBQS sample anticorrelated with the distance from the QSOs at a 99.7% significance level. Although this result apparently agrees with the predictions of the multiple magnification bias, it is difficult to explain by gravitational lensing effects alone; dust in the foreground galaxies and selection effects in the detection of LBQS QSOs should be taken into account. It has been established that the lines of sight to PKS flat-spectrum QSOs go through significantly higher foreground galaxy densities than the directions to LBQS quasars, what may be partially related to the reported reddening of PKS QSOs.