LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE IN THE SOUTHERN SKY REDSHIFT SURVEY

The amplitude of fluctuations in the galaxy density field is explored at various scales by measuring the power spectrum from the Southern Sky Redshift Survey and the CfA samples. At lambda less-than-or-equal-to 30 h-1 Mpc the observed power spectrum is quite consistent with the standard CDM model. At larger scales the data indicate an excess of power over the standard CDM model. The open CDM model with OMEGA-h = 0.2 is consistent with the observed power spectrum over all scales explored. The observed power spectrum from our optical galaxy samples is in good agreement with that drawn from the sparsely sampled IRAS galaxies. The shape of the power spectrum is also studied by examining the relation between the genus per unit volume and the smoothing length. We find that, over Gaussian smoothing scales from 6 to 14 h-1 Mpc, the power spectrum has a slope of about -1. The topology of the galaxy density field is studied by measuring the shift of the genus curve from the Gaussian case. Over all smoothing scales studied, the observed genus curves are consistent with a random phase distribution of the galaxy density field, as predicted by the inflationary scenarios.