QUASI-PERIODICITY IN DEEP REDSHIFT SURVEYS

The recent result by Broadhurst et al., showing a striking, nearly periodic, galaxy redshift distribution in a narrow pencil-beam survey, is explained within the Voronoi cellular model of clustering of galaxies. Galaxies, whose luminosities are selected from a Schechter luminosity function, are placed randomly within the walls of this cellular model. Narrow and deep, magnitude-limited, pencil-beam surveys through these structures are simulated. Some 15 per cent of these beams show the observed regular pattern, with a spacing between the peaks of the order of 105 h-1 -150 h-1 Mpc, but most pencil-beams show peaks in the redshift distribution without periodicity, so we may conclude that, even within a cellular universe, periodicity is not a common phenomena.