NON-GAUSSIAN STATISTICS OF PENCIL BEAM SURVEYS

We study the effect of the non-Gaussian clustering of galaxies on the statistics of pencil beam surveys. We derive the probability distribution from the power spectrum peaks by means of Edgeworth expansion and find that the higher order moments of the galaxy distribution play a dominant role. The probability of obtaining the 128 h-1 Mpc periodicity found in pencil beam surveys is raised by more than one order of magnitude, up to 1%. Further data are needed to decide if non-Gaussian distribution alone is sufficient to explain the 128 h-1 Mpc periodicity, or if extra large-scale power is necessary.