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# The Clustering of AGN and Galaxies at Intermediate Redshift

## 1 Introduction

The association of Active Galactic Nuclei hosts with other galaxies is well established (Bahcall et al., 1969; Yee and Green, 1987; Hall and Green, 1998; Laurikaninen and Salo, 1995; Smith et al., 1995, 2000) and provides constraints on the models for the formation and fueling of AGN. In addition, as QSOs can be used to trace large-scale-structure at $`z1`$ (Boyle et al., 1999), estimates of the QSO environments are required to estimate their bias with respect to galaxies which are used to trace large-scale-structure at $`z<1`$.

Several previous studies of AGN environments are summarized in Table 1. Radio-loud AGN are typically found in environments comparable to galaxy clusters (Yee and Green, 1987; Hall and Green, 1998; Wold et al, 2000) while $`z<0.3`$ radio-quiet AGN appear to be associated with poorer environments similar to field galaxies (Laurikaninen and Salo, 1995; Smith et al., 1995; De Robertis et al., 1998). While the $`z>0.3`$ radio-quiet AGN-galaxy cross-correlation function is comparable to the clustering of field galaxies (Smith et al., 2000), it has only been detected with $`2\sigma `$ significance (Ellingson et al., 1991; Teplitz et al., 1999; Smith et al., 2000) and no detailed information is available on the strength or evolution of galaxy clustering around radio-quiet AGN at these redshifts.

Previous studies of AGN environments have typically used galaxy catalogues derived from single band imaging. Galaxy evolution and $`k`$corrections result in a changing morphological mix of galaxies as a function of redshift and depth. As galaxy clustering is correlated with morphology and color, the clustering properties of galaxies are also a function of redshift and the observer’s bandpass. It is therefore plausible that estimates of AGN environments at $`z>0.3`$ have been biased by the changing properties of the galaxy catalogues selected from single band imaging. By using color selection, it is possible to select the same galaxy type as a function of redshift. By measuring the cross-correlation function of AGN with early and late-type galaxies, it is possible to determine if radio-quiet AGN are in unusual environments.

## 2 Data

### 2.1 The Galaxy Sample

The galaxy sample has been previously used by Brown et al. (2000) to measure the clustering of galaxies as a function of color and a more detailed description of the catalogue is provided by Brown et al. (2000) and Brown (2000). The image data consists of $`5^{}\times 5^{}`$ images of the South Galactic Pole (SGP) and UK Schmidt field 855 (F855). The images were produced by stacking SuperCOSMOS scans of UK Schmidt photographic plates in $`U`$, $`B_J`$, $`R`$ and $`I`$ bands. Object detection, instrumental photometry and faint object star-galaxy classifications were determined with SExtractor Bertin and Arnouts (1996). Photometric calibration of the data was determined with CCD images and published photometry. To prevent dust extinction introducing spurious large-scale-structure, magnitude estimates are corrected with the extinction estimates of Schlegel et al. (1998). The final galaxy catalogues are complete to $`B_J23.5`$ and contain $`2\times 10^5`$ galaxies per field.

### 2.2 The AGN Sample

The AGN sample consists of 69 $`0.2<z<0.7`$ $`UBR`$ selected broad emission line AGN from La Franca et al. (1999). The survey area is the SGP field and while the catalogue does not have homogeneous sky coverage, it is not strongly concentrated in any one part of the field. As the F855 field only contains 7 $`0.2<z<0.7`$ AGN with published positions (Veron-Cetty and Veron, 2000), the F855 field has not been used to measure AGN-galaxy clustering. AGN positions were determined by selecting $`B_J<23.5`$ objects in the stacked SuperCOSMOS scans within $`5^{\prime \prime }`$ of the published positions. The resulting catalogue of AGN contained 69 $`B_J<21`$ objects with $`UB_J<0.1`$ colors. The $`B_J`$ absolute magnitudes and redshifts of the AGN are plotted in Figure 1. The catalogue contains 36 QSOs ($`M_{B_J}<21.5+5\mathrm{l}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{g}h`$ where $`h\times 100\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1H_0`$) and 33 Seyfert 1 galaxies. Five of the AGN are within $`20^{\prime \prime }`$ of $`1.4\mathrm{GHz}`$ sources detected by the NVSS (Condon et al., 1998) but all have fluxes less than $`60\mathrm{mJy}`$ and $`1.4\mathrm{GHz}`$ luminosities less than $`10^{26}\mathrm{WHz}^1`$.

### 2.3 Photometric Redshifts

Approximately $`700`$ $`0<z<0.8`$ galaxy redshifts in the SGP and F855 fields are available from the NED database. Spectroscopic redshifts are available for galaxies as faint as $`B_J24`$ so it possible to use multicolor photometry and spectroscopic redshifts of galaxies in the SGP and F855 fields to calibrate the photometric redshifts. The relationship between the multicolor photometry and the galaxy redshift was determined by fitting quadratic functions to the data (Connolly et al., 1995). The relationship was determined for $`UB_JRI`$, $`UB_JR`$, $`B_JRI`$ and $`B_JR`$ photometry as only a small fraction of the catalogue is detected in all 4 bands. Figure 2 shows a comparison photometric redshifts and the spectroscopic redshifts for galaxies in the two fields. While $`B_JR`$ photometric redshifts are poorer than photometric redshifts derived in 3 or more bands, they do place useful constraints on the redshifts. Error estimates for the photometric redshifts have been determined by the measuring the rms of the residuals as a function of photometric redshift and color. The accuracy of the photometric redshifts is a function of galaxy color and, as shown in Figure 3, red galaxies have comparatively small errors.

### 2.4 Color Selection

A significant bias present in most studies of the AGN environment is that they have relied on small samples or single band imaging. Galaxy evolution and $`k`$corrections result in a changing morphological mix of galaxies as a function of limiting magnitude with single band imaging. Galaxy catalogues in bands bluer than $`R`$ are dominated by weakly clustered (blue) late-type galaxies at magnitudes fainter than $`B_J22`$ (Efstathiou et al., 1991).

Multicolor imaging provides significant advantages for the study of the AGN host environment. Colors and photometric redshifts can be used to select particular galaxy types at faint magnitudes. As galaxy clustering is strongly correlated with color (Brown et al., 2000) and morphology (Davis and Geller, 1976; Loveday et al., 1995), studying the cross-correlation of AGN with particular galaxy types should help determine if AGN hosts are in unusual galaxy environments.

The color criteria applied to the galaxy catalogue select galaxies redder or bluer than a non-evolving Sbc in $`B_JR`$ where the color as a function of redshift is determined with $`k`$corrections from Coleman et al. (1980). The use of $`B_JR`$ rather than shallower $`UB_J`$ or $`RI`$ allows the selection of $`B_J=23.5`$ early-type galaxies at $`z0.5`$. As the $`B_JR`$ selection criteria are a function of redshift, photometric redshifts are used to determine the correct value of $`B_JR`$ when selecting galaxies. For the remainder of this paper, the early and late subsamples will refer to galaxies redder and bluer than the $`B_JR`$ selection criteria. Figure 4, a plot of the colors and photometric redshifts of galaxies in the SGP with HST morphologies (Abraham et al., 1996; Smail et al., 1997), shows that the color selection criteria are capable of selecting different types of galaxies.

## 3 The Angular and Spatial Correlation Functions

The angular correlation function estimates the fractional excess of object pairs at a given angular separation compared with what would be expected for a random distribution of objects. The estimators of the angular correlation function used in this paper require random object catalogues which are produced by making copies of the galaxy catalogue and randomly repositioning the copied galaxies across the field.

The angular autocorrelation function of galaxies is estimated with

$$\widehat{\omega }(\theta )=\frac{DD2DR+RR}{RR}$$
(1)
(Landy and Szalay, 1993) where $`DD`$, $`DR`$ and $`RR`$ are the number of galaxy-galaxy, galaxy-random and random-random pairs at angular separation $`\theta \pm \delta \theta `$. The Landy and Szalay (1993) estimator is only applicable to the autocorrelation function so the AGN-galaxy (and early-late) cross-correlation function is determined with

$$\widehat{\omega }(\theta )=\frac{AG}{AR}1$$
(2)
where $`AG`$ and $`AR`$ are the number of AGN-galaxy and AGN-random pairs at angular separation $`\theta \pm \delta \theta `$. The random errors of $`AR`$, $`DR`$ and $`RR`$ are reduced by taking the average of multiple estimates of each parameter where each estimate has been determined with a different random object catalogue. Both estimators of the angular correlation function satisfy the integral constraint,

$$\widehat{\omega }(\theta )\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_1\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_20$$
(3)
(Groth and Peebles, 1977), resulting in an underestimate of the angular correlation function. To remove this bias from the correlation function, the term

$$\omega (\theta )_\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}\omega (\theta )\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_1\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_2$$
(4)
is added to the estimate of the correlation function. The term $`\omega (\theta )_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ does require an assumption of the form of the correlation function to correctly estimate the value of correlation function.

Galaxy angular correlation functions are typically approximated by power-laws where

$$\omega (\theta )=A\theta ^{1\gamma }$$
(5)
where $`A`$ is a constant and $`\gamma 1.7`$. The corresponding spatial correlation function is given by

$$\xi (r,z)=(r/r_0)^\gamma (1+z)^{(3+ϵ)}$$
(6)
where $`r`$ is the separation of the galaxies in physical coordinates and $`r_0`$ and $`ϵ`$ are constants. For $`ϵ=0`$ and $`ϵ=\gamma 3`$, the clustering properties are fixed in physical and comoving coordinates respectively. The relationship between the angular and spatial correlation functions is given by Limber’s equation (Limber, 1954). If $`\xi (r,z)0`$ when $`r\mathrm{}>0.1z`$, then Limber’s equation is given by

$`\omega (\theta )=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dN_1}{dz}\left[\xi (r(\theta ),z)\frac{dN_2}{dz^{}}𝑑z^{}\right]𝑑z}`$ (7)
$`/{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{dN_1}{dz}}dz{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{dN_2}{dz}}dz`$
(Phillipps et al., 1978) where $`\frac{dN_1}{dz}`$ and $`\frac{dN_2}{dz}`$ are the redshift distributions of each set of objects (e.g. the early and late subsamples) and $`r(\theta )`$ is the distance between two objects at $`z`$ and $`z^{}`$ separated by angle $`\theta `$ on the sky. For the AGN-galaxy correlation function, the redshifts of each AGN are known so Limber’s equation can be written as

$`\omega (\theta )=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{\overset{n}{}}}\left[{\displaystyle \xi _{ag}(r(\theta ),z)\frac{dN_g}{dz}𝑑z}\right]`$ (8)
$`/{\displaystyle \underset{i}{\overset{n}{}}}\left[{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{dN_g}{dz}}dz\right]`$
where $`n`$ is the number of AGN, $`\frac{dN_g}{dz}`$ is the number of galaxies per unit redshift and $`r(\theta )`$ is the distance in physical coordinates between an AGN at redshift $`z_i`$ and a galaxy at redshift $`z`$ separated by angle $`\theta `$ on the sky.

## 4 The Clustering of Faint Galaxies

Estimates of the clustering of $`z0.5`$ galaxies are required if the environment of AGN hosts is to be compared to the “normal” galaxy environment. To make the comparison valid, the same galaxy selection criteria are applied to the study of galaxy-galaxy clustering as AGN-galaxy clustering. The early and late subsample autocorrelation functions and the early-late cross-correlation functions have been determined in the SGP and F855 fields. Plots of the $`18.0<B_J<22.5`$ angular correlation functions are shown in Figure 5. The amplitudes and values of the $`\gamma `$ as a function of magnitude are summarized in Tables 2 to 4. The value of $`\gamma `$ and the amplitude of the clustering strongly depend on color (Brown et al., 2000). The observed clustering in the SGP is consistently stronger than the observed clustering in F855 at bright magnitudes. However, at fainter magnitudes the difference between the clustering properties in the two fields is significantly reduced and the late subsample autocorrelation functions are comparable. At faint magnitudes, the estimates of $`\gamma `$ for the early-late cross-correlation function in the SGP and F855 fields differ by $`2\sigma `$. It is possible that this is due to the cross-correlation function estimator having larger errors than predicted by the Poisson estimate (Landy and Szalay, 1993). Also, at faint magnitudes in the F855 field, the early-late cross-correlation function is comparable to the expected variations in the galaxy number counts introduced by errors in the dust extinction estimates.

To determine the spatial correlation function, an estimate of the redshift distribution is required. Estimates of the redshift distribution derived from luminosity functions, $`k`$corrections and evolution models are subject to uncertainties as a range of models can reproduce the observed number counts. Models which assume a shape for the redshift distribution (Baugh and Efstathiou, 1993) are useful for single band imaging of low redshift galaxies but are not as effective for multicolor selected samples at higher redshifts where the selection criteria and $`k`$corrections skew the redshift distribution.

Photometric redshifts contain information on the redshift distribution but assume that galaxies with the same colors and magnitudes are at the same redshifts. If the errors of the photometric redshifts are dominated by the redshift distribution of galaxies with the same multicolor photometry, it should be possible to derive a redshift distribution using the measured errors of the photometric redshifts. The redshift distribution has been estimated by smoothing the photometric redshift distribution with a Gaussian where the $`\sigma `$ of the Gaussian is given by the rms of the errors of the redshift estimates. At $`z<0.05`$ the redshift distribution has been multiplied by $`z/0.05`$ to prevent an infinite density of galaxies at $`z=0`$. Figure 6 shows the observed redshift distribution of galaxies from Glazebrook et al. (1995) detected in the stacked scans and models derived from their photometric redshifts. There is reasonable agreement between the measured and model distributions, though the galaxy number counts are limited. While the exact redshift distributions have not been determined, it is unlikely that large errors dominate the model redshift distributions.

The estimated redshift distributions of the early and late subsamples are plotted in Figure 7. The photometric redshifts of blue galaxies have large error estimates and this results in the late subsample redshift distribution being significantly broader than the early subsample redshift distribution. The width of the distribution is consistent with late-type galaxies having smaller $`k`$corrections and a higher fraction of dwarf galaxies than early-type galaxies. It should be noted that while the photometric redshifts are complete to $`B_J=23.5`$ for the early subsample, photometric redshifts for $`B_J>22.5`$ late subsample galaxies are incomplete and this may slightly skew the redshift distribution.

The amplitudes of the early and late autocorrelation functions and early-late cross-correlation function have been plotted in Figure 8. To allow the comparison of the amplitude at different magnitudes, $`\gamma `$ has been fixed for all magnitudes to the average value of $`\gamma `$ for the SGP and F855 $`18.0<B_J<23.5`$ correlation functions. Models with the clustering fixed in comoving coordinates have been fitted to the $`18.0<B_J<22.5`$ magnitude range for the SGP and F855 fields. The models have been fitted to this magnitude range as it includes a large number of galaxy-galaxy pairs while avoiding systematic errors which could be present near the magnitude limits of the data. Additional estimates of $`r_0`$ with clustering fixed in comoving and physical coordinates are provided in Table 5.

Figure 8 shows the clustering in the SGP is consistently stronger than the clustering in F855 for $`18.0<B_J<22.5`$ galaxies. Before concluding that large-scale-structure is responsible for the observed difference between the clustering in the two fields, it is useful to exclude the most plausible sources of error. Systematic errors in the $`B_JR`$ colors of $`0.2`$ magnitudes in the two fields only slightly alter the observed clustering in each field and are inconsistent with galaxy number counts, color-color diagrams and published photometry. Large uniform errors in the photometry in all 4 bands can bring the clustering at bright magnitudes into agreement but are also inconsistent with galaxy number counts and published photometry. The Schlegel et al. (1998) dust maps estimate $`E(BV)0.05`$ in the F855 field and errors in the dust extinction estimates could introduce systematic errors. However, errors in the dust extinction estimates should produce the largest discrepencies at faint magnitudes where the amplitude of the angular correlation function is small rather than at bright magnitudes.

It is therefore not implausible that the difference between the two fields is due to large-scale-structure. The distribution of galaxy clusters in both fields shows evidence of structures comparable to the field-of-view (Brown et al., 2000; Brown, 2000) and the SGP may contain several “sheets” of galaxies (Broadhurst et al., 1990) though it is uncertain if this is particularly unusual (Kaiser and Peacock, 1991). The effects of large-scale-structure on estimates of the correlation function should decrease with increasing survey volume and this is consistent with the observed difference between the clustering in the two fields decreasing with increasing depth. While it is unexpected to see weakly clustered late subsample galaxies showing the effects of large-scale-structure, the discrepancy between the two fields disappears for bluer galaxies selected with $`UB_J<0.4`$ (Brown et al., 2000). As it is uncertain which field is more representative of the Universe, the discussion of AGN-galaxy clustering in the SGP assumes that estimates of $`r_0`$ could have systematic errors comparable to the difference between the estimates of $`r_0`$ in the SGP and F855 ($`1h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$).

Models for the clustering of early subsample galaxies in each field are a reasonable approximation to the observed clustering and the estimates of the spatial correlation function are comparable to the clustering of early-type galaxies in the local Universe (Loveday et al., 1995; Guzzo et al., 1997). In contrast, the observed amplitude of the late subsample autocorrelation function is an order of magnitude weaker and the models are a poor fit to the data. At $`B_J>22`$ the amplitude of the correlation function rapidly decreases due to the increasing number of weakly clustered faint blue galaxies (Efstathiou et al., 1991; Brown et al., 2000). The amplitude of the early-late cross-correlation function also decreases at faint magnitudes though models of the spatial correlation function are better approximations to the observed clustering. While the values of $`r_0`$ for the early-late cross-correlation function are similar to those for the late subsample autocorrelation function, the larger value of $`\gamma `$ results in significantly stronger clustering on scales of $`\mathrm{}<1h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

## 5 AGN-Galaxy Clustering

Estimates of the cross-correlation of AGN with the early and late subsamples are summarized in Table 6. The AGN-early cross-correlation is significantly stronger on scales $`\mathrm{}>1^{}`$ while on smaller scales the signal-to-noise is poor. Despite the strength of the AGN-early cross-correlation, inspection of Table 6 shows most AGN-galaxy pairs are AGN-late pairs and the cross-correlation of AGN with all galaxies will be similar to the AGN-late cross-correlation function.

The AGN-early and AGN-late angular cross-correlation functions for $`B_J<22.5`$ galaxies are shown in Figure 9. Power-laws with $`\gamma `$ fixed to $`1.90`$ and $`1.65`$ have been fitted to the AGN-early and AGN-late data on angular scales $`<0.3^{}`$. The AGN-early cross-correlation function is strong and the power-law fit is a good approximation to the observed clustering though most of the data points are $`\mathrm{}>1\sigma `$ from the fit. In contrast, the AGN-late cross-correlation is weak and a power-law is a poor fit to the data. From the available data, the amplitude of the AGN-late cross-correlation function can not be reliably measured.

The amplitude of the AGN-early cross-correlation function is plotted in Figure 10 along with models of the cross-correlation with evolution fixed in comoving and physical coordinates. While the amplitude of the angular cross-correlation function is typically less than the early subsample autocorrelation function, the difference between the early subsample and AGN redshift distributions results in the estimates of $`r_0`$ being significantly higher than that of the early subsample autocorrelation function.

The errors of the $`\omega (\theta )`$ estimates are dominated by galaxies along the line-of-sight which are not associated with the AGN. The signal and significance of the correlation function can be improved if the number of unassociated galaxies included in the estimate of $`\omega (\theta )`$ are reduced. Early-type galaxies have comparatively small photometric redshift errors so it is possible to define a narrow range of photometric redshifts which could be associated with the AGN. Figure 11 shows the AGN-early cross-correlation function for galaxies with photometric redshifts within $`2\sigma `$ of the AGN redshift. The inclusion of photometric redshift constraints has significantly improved the signal-to-noise and the observed correlation function is more consistent with a power-law than Figure 9. While deviations from a power-law have been seen in some estimates of AGN-galaxy correlation functions (Hall and Green, 1998; Croom and Shanks, 1999), there are no statistically significant breaks from a power-law on scales $`<0.3^{}`$ in Figure 11.

The spatial AGN-early cross-correlation can be determined by deriving the redshift distribution of galaxies with photometric redshifts within $`2\sigma `$ of each AGN when applying Limber’s equation. The amplitude of the AGN-early cross-correlation and models of the spatial cross-correlation are shown in Figure 12 and the fit to the $`B_J=22.5`$ data point is weaker than in Figure 10. However, the estimate of $`r_0`$ and the power-law form of the angular correlation function in Figure 11 are consistent with AGN environments being similar to the environments of strongly clustered galaxies such as the early subsample and low redshift ellipticals (Guzzo et al., 1997).

The estimates of $`r_0`$ are dependent on the assumed value of $`\gamma `$ and it is possible that $`\gamma 1.90`$. If radio-quiet AGN were in spiral galaxies (Hutchings et al., 1984; Malkan et al., 1984) and had similar clustering properties to late subsample galaxies, the value of $`\gamma `$ for the AGN-early cross-correlation function would be $`1.65`$. However, when the AGN-early cross-correlation function was fitted with power-laws with $`\gamma 1.65`$, the estimates of $`r_0`$ increased to $`>11h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ which is approximately double the estimate of $`r_0`$ for the early-late spatial cross-correlation function.

There may be a correlation between AGN luminosity and host galaxy if luminous AGN occur more frequently in early-type galaxies than Seyferts (McLure et al., 1999). If this is the case, the correlation between galaxy morphology and environment may result in a correlation between AGN luminosity and environment. Figure 13 compares the amplitudes of the Seyfert 1 ($`M_{B_J}<21.5`$) and QSO ($`M_{B_J}>21.5`$) cross-correlation functions with the early subsample. Fits to the $`B_J=22.5`$ data point show Seyfert 1s are correlated with slightly richer environments but difference between the $`r_0`$ estimates has $`<1\sigma `$ significance.

## 6 Discussion

While the detection of radio-quiet AGN in environments similar to early-type galaxies may appear to contradict previous studies at similar redshifts (Yee and Green, 1987; Boyle and Couch, 1993; Croom and Shanks, 1999; Teplitz et al., 1999; Smith et al., 2000), this assumes all studies of AGN-galaxy clustering have used the same galaxy population to measure AGN environments. However, as color selection has been used to select galaxies for this study, the properties of the early and late subsamples will differ significantly from catalogues of galaxies which are selected by observed broadband flux.

Early subsample galaxies contribute $`30\%`$ of the total galaxy counts at $`B_J<21`$ and only $`15\%`$ of the counts at $`B_J>22`$. If the AGN-late cross-correlation function is assumed to be negligible and the AGN-early cross-correlation function is a power law with $`r_09h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$, then the AGN-galaxy cross-correlation function should be a power-law with $`r_05h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ at $`B_J<21`$ and $`r_03h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ at $`B_J>22`$. In redder bands where the early-type galaxies comprise a larger fraction of the total galaxy number counts, stronger clustering will be measured. Early subsample galaxies comprise $`25\%`$ of the total $`R<21.5`$ galaxy counts and the AGN-galaxy correlation function would be expected to be $`r_04h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ even though the redshift range sampled is comparable to that of $`B_J23`$ galaxies. These estimates of $`r_0`$ for $`B_J`$ and $`R`$ limited samples are consistent with measurements of the AGN-galaxy cross-correlation function derived from single band imaging by Yee and Green (1987), Ellingson et al. (1991) and Smith et al. (1995, 2000).

While radio-quiet AGN occur in environments comparable to early-type galaxies, this should not be interpreted as a direct correlation between richness and AGN activity. As shown in Figure 13, there is no evidence for a strong correlation between AGN luminosity and environment. HST imaging of radio-quiet QSOs and X-ray selected AGN indicates $`75\%`$ of host galaxies have morphologies earlier than Sbc galaxies (McLure et al., 1999; Schade et al., 2000). It is therefore plausible that AGN activity is not significantly effected by the host environment and that the observed strength of the AGN-early cross-correlation function is due to the correlation between galaxy morphology and clustering properties.

The strength AGN-early cross-correlation function implies that it should be detectable at $`z0.5`$. Using samples of early-type galaxies obtained with CCD mosaics on 4-m class telescopes, it will be possible to measure the evolution of the AGN-early cross-correlation function at $`z>1`$. This will provide an estimate of the bias of AGN with respect to galaxies which are used to measure large-scale-structure at lower redshifts. If the clustering properties of AGN are due to the distribution of host galaxy morphologies, the evolution of the AGN-early cross-correlation function will also place strong constraints on the properties of AGN host galaxies as a function of redshift.

## 7 Summary

The environments of galaxies and 69 $`0.2<z<0.7`$ AGN have been measured using photometric redshifts and color criteria to select galaxy types to $`B_J23.5`$. The key conclusions are
(i) The clustering of early subsample galaxies is strong across the observed magnitude range with $`r_07h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ and $`\gamma 1.90`$.
(ii) The autocorrelation function of late subsample galaxies is weak and decreases to $`r_0\mathrm{}<4h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ at $`B_J23.5`$. This is probably due to the increasing fraction of weakly clustered blue galaxies at faint apparent magnitudes.
(iii) The cross-correlation function of radio-quiet $`24<M_B<19`$ AGN with early subsample galaxies has been detected with high significance on scales $`\mathrm{}<1^{}`$. The AGN-early spatial cross-correlation function is stronger than the early subsample autocorrelation function and is comparable to the clustering of elliptical galaxies at $`z0`$.
(iv) The AGN-late cross-correlation function is very weak and has been detected with low significance. As the fraction of late-type galaxies in magnitude limited samples increases with survey depth, the cross-correlation function of AGN with all galaxies decreases with increasing magnitude.
(v) The signal-to-noise of AGN-galaxy cross-correlation functions is significantly improved by using photometric redshifts to reject galaxies which can not be associated with the AGN from the correlation function estimate.
(vi) The correlation between AGN optical luminosity and host environment is weak and has not been detected at a significant level in this work.

## 8 Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the SuperCOSMOS unit at Royal Observatory Edinburgh for providing the digitized scans of UK Schmidt photographic plates. The authors also wish to thank Nigel Hambly, Bryn Jones and Harvey MacGillivray for productive discussions of the methods employed to coadd scans of photographic plates. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Michael Brown acknowledges the financial support of an Australian Postgraduate Award and the support of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.


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# A wide-field spectroscopic survey of the cluster of galaxies Cl0024+1654

## 1 Introduction

Clusters of galaxies are increasingly viewed not as simple isolated and relaxed systems but as embedded in and connected to the general large-scale structure in the Universe. This view of clusters in a larger context has consequences for the interpretation of cluster galaxy populations, cluster dynamics and mass estimates.

Clusters of galaxies grow by continuously accreting galaxies and groups of galaxies from the surrounding field, mostly along filamentary structures. In the process, galaxies are transformed from the predominantly blue, actively star-forming, spiral population characteristic of the field to the red, passive and elliptical population characteristic of the inner and denser regions of clusters (Dressler morphdensity (1980), Abraham et al. abraham (1996), Balogh et al. balogh (1998)). Cluster galaxy populations evolve with redshift: rich clusters at high redshift contain a larger fraction of blue galaxies than local ones (Butcher & Oemler butcher-oemler1 (1978), butcher-oemler2 (1984); Cl0024+1654 is an example of a “Butcher-Oemler” cluster). The exact nature of the interaction of infalling galaxies with the cluster environment (hot intra-cluster medium, tidal gravitational field) and its influence on the morphology of galaxies, their gas content and star-formation rates (as measured by galaxy colours and spectral type) are as yet ill-understood; hence the interest in investigating the “infall region” beyond $`1h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ distance from the cluster centre, where the transition from field to cluster galaxies is taking place. The advent of new wide-field CCD mosaic cameras available on a number of large telescopes (e. g. CFHT, CTIO, Subaru, ESO2.2m) makes it possible to obtain photometric and morphological information on 1 - 10 Mpc scales around the cluster centres. However, wide-field investigation of clusters demands both imaging and spectroscopic observations. Individual spectra of galaxies describe their spectral energy distribution and provide their redshift, which is indispensable to produce a catalogue of cluster members with radial velocity and information regarding their stellar content and star formation history. At present there is only a limited number of clusters with more than $`200`$ spectroscopically identified member galaxies (e. g. Abraham et al. abraham (1996)), and especially at high redshift ($`z0.2`$) spectroscopically well-studied clusters become very rare, mostly due to the fact that contamination by field galaxies increases rapidly with redshift.

The fact that clusters are not isolated systems also raises questions concerning the traditional ways of estimating masses of clusters of galaxies through different mass estimators: gravitational lensing analyses, kinematical analyses from redshifts of cluster member galaxies and X-ray observations.

Gravitational lensing is sensitive to the total integrated mass along the line-of-sight from the observer to the lensed sources, weighted by the appropriate combination of angular size distances between observer, lens and source (e. g. Schneider, Ehlers & Falco SEF (1992), Bartelmann & Schneider bartelmann-schneider (2001)). In the presence of massive structures other than the cluster along the line of sight, the mass derived from gravitational lensing overestimates the mass of the cluster proper. Large spectroscopic surveys provide additional information needed to correctly interpret the lensing analysis in this case. Metzler et al. (metzler (2000)) investigate the influence of the presence of filaments and groups of galaxies in the vicinity of a cluster on weak lensing estimates of the cluster mass and find that significant overestimates (up to a factor 1.5 to 2) are possible and even likely. Similar investigations with comparable results were conducted by Cen et al. (cen (1997)) and Reblinsky et al. (reblinsky (1999)).

A similar bias should be expected to affect measurements of velocity dispersions: if foreground or background groups of galaxies in the immediate neighbourhood of the cluster are added into the redshift histogram, but are not resolved and recognized as separate entities, the velocity dispersion of the cluster itself will be overestimated. Generally only 30 to 50 member galaxies are used to estimate the line-of-sight velocity dispersion (and virial cluster mass; see e. g. the large compilations of Girardi et al. girardi1 (1998) and Girardi & Mezzetti girardi2 (2000)). Furthermore, the measured redshifts are generally concentrated within a relatively small region within a projected radius of $`500h^1\mathrm{kpc}`$ of the cluster centre. Whereas one can argue that these numbers might be sufficient for relaxed clusters with regular spatial and velocity distributions, the various derived estimates will contain large systematic errors if unresolved substructures are present. What can be obtained from redshift surveys is a galaxy number density weighted line-of-sight velocity dispersion averaged along the line-of-sight. With a sufficiently large number of cluster member redshifts it is possible to measure the variation of the line-of-sight velocity dispersion with projected distance from the cluster centre (Carlberg et al. carlberg (1997)), but determination of even more detailed information on the dynamical status (e. g. velocity anisotropy profile) of a cluster requires a forbiddingly large number of redshifts (e. g. Merritt merritt-coma (1987)).

Clearly, combining information coming from gravitational lensing (weak and strong), the X-ray emission from the hot intra-cluster gas, the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and the galaxy velocity distribution is the best way to arrive at secure mass estimates for clusters of galaxies (see e. g. Castander et al. castander (2000)). This is now possible for several cases. Of particular interest are clusters for which a significant discrepancy between different mass estimates is found. One such cluster is the well-known lensing cluster Cl0024+1654111This cluster is commonly called Cl0024+1654, although the common Internet databases, such as NED (http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu), list it as ZwCl0024.0+1652 as it originally appeared in Zwicky (zwicky (1965)).. About 100 redshifts of galaxies in this cluster were obtained by Dressler & Gunn (dressler1 (1992)) and Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)), resulting in a velocity dispersion of $`\sigma 1300\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, which is consistent with mass estimates derived from the spectacular arc system in the cluster centre (Kassiola, Kovner & Fort KKF (1992), Smail et al. smail (1996), Tyson et al. tyson (1998), Broadhurst et al. broadhurst (2000)). Cl0024+1654 was among the first clusters in which a coherent shear signal due to weak lensing was found (Bonnet et al. BMF (1994)). A crude mass estimate from this analysis was consistent with the strong lensing and kinematical estimates. In addition to the signal due to Cl0024+1654 itself, Bonnet et al. (BMF (1994)) also found a coherent signal to the north-east of the cluster centre in an area where no obvious galaxy overdensity could be seen. The X-ray luminosity of Cl0024+1654 on the other hand is unusually low for a cluster of this velocity dispersion, and mass estimates from the X-ray observations are a factor of two to three lower than the lensing and kinematical estimates (Soucail et al. soucail (2000)).

In order to better understand the dynamics of Cl0024+1654 and how it is embedded in the surrounding large-scale structure, we have conducted a wide-field spectroscopic survey at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) from 1992 to 1996. In this paper we present the catalogue of the galaxies observed for this survey. Section 2 summarizes the photometric and spectroscopic observations. The data reduction and analysis are presented in Section 3. Section 4 discusses some interesting global results of the survey and describes some structures found in the redshift distribution that are not directly related to the cluster Cl0024+1654. A summary is given in Section 5. A detailed analysis of the dynamics of the cluster itself and its environment as well as the spectral properties of its member galaxies will be the subject of a forthcoming paper (Czoske et al. paper2 (2001)).

Throughout this paper we use a Hubble constant $`H_0=100h^1\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, which gives a physical scale of $`3.195h^1\mathrm{kpc}\mathrm{arcsec}^1`$ at the cluster redshift.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 Imaging

We will use photometric results from two broad-band images in the analysis of the spectroscopic survey presented in this paper.

On 26 September 1995, we obtained an I-band image using the UH8k camera (Luppino, Metzger & Miyazaki UH8k (1995)) on CFHT. The I-band image was reduced chip by chip, i. e. the final result is in the form of eight individual images, one for each chip of the camera. The final images were obtained as the mean of 10 exposures of 1200 s each, using sigma clipping ($`2.5\sigma `$ above the mean level and $`4\sigma `$ below) to reject hot pixels and cosmic ray hits, and have very good seeing of $`0\stackrel{}{.}7`$ FWHM; however, the background is marred by stray light, presumably due to the bright star 47 Psc ($`V=5.1`$, spectral type M3) at $`50\mathrm{}`$ distance from the centre of Cl0024+1654, although outside the field of view of the UH8k. The I-band photometric catalogue was obtained from the individually stacked chips using the SExtractor package (Bertin & Arnouts sextractor (1996)) with a threshold of $`1.5\sigma `$ and a minimum detection area of 5 pixels. The catalogue contains more than $`4\times 10^4`$ objects over a field of about $`28\times 28\mathrm{arcmin}^2`$, the limiting magnitude is $`I24`$. Unless otherwise noted, we use total magnitudes as given by SExtractor’s MAG\_BEST. The internal errors on the I-band magnitudes (as given by SExtractor) are smaller than 0.05 for $`I<22.7`$ (0.01 for $`I<20.7`$). Note that due to the chip-wise reduction of the I-band image, the gaps between the chips (of typical width 5-10 arcsec) were not filled in during stacking and the photometric catalogue contains no objects from these regions.

On 15 November 1999 we obtained a 3600 s V-band image using the CFH12k camera (Cuillandre et al. CFH12k (2000)) on CFHT (Figs. 1 and 4a-4h). The six individual exposures were bias and flat-field corrected in the standard way using the mscred package under Iraf222IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.. The exposures were then registered onto the Digital Sky Survey333http://archive.stsci.edu/dss/ (DSS) image of the field and median combined. The final image, a mosaic of all 12 chips with all the inter-chip gaps filled in, has $`0\stackrel{}{.}7`$ seeing (FWHM). The V-band photometric catalogue obtained from this image contains $`3.7\times 10^4`$ objects on a field of $`42\times 28\mathrm{arcmin}^2`$. The internal errors on the V-band magnitudes are smaller than 0.05 for $`V<23.3`$ (0.01 for $`V<21.1`$). The limiting magnitude is $`V25`$.

In order to obtain colour information aperture magnitudes were measured in $`14\mathrm{pixel}`$ ($`2\stackrel{}{.}8`$) diameter apertures for the V- and I-band images. This diameter is sufficiently large compared to the seeing FWHM to enclose most of the light from the object under consideration and small enough to avoid contamination by neighbouring objects in crowded regions like the cluster centre. The objects were then matched up using a polynomial transformation of the I-band image coordinates onto the system of the V-band image. The centres of the two images coincide to within 40 arcsec, so that the overlapping region covers virtually the whole UH8k field. Note that the gaps from the I band image show up in the colour-magnitude catalogue as well. The resulting colour-magnitude catalogue contains $`2.1\times 10^4`$ objects with errors on the colours of smaller than 0.05 for $`V<23.3`$ (0.01 for $`V<21.1`$). Star-galaxy classification over a sub-region of the colour-magnitude plane (as relevant for the present paper) will be described in Sect. 3.5.

A more detailed description of the photometric catalogue (including star-galaxy separation over the whole colour-magnitude plane) is given in Mayen et al. (mayen (2001)) who use this catalogue to investigate the depletion of background galaxies due to the gravitational lens effect of Cl0024.

### 2.2 Spectroscopy

Spectra were obtained using multi-slit spectroscopy during three observing runs at CFHT and one at WHT. Table 1 shows the observing log.

Candidates for all the runs (except for run 1) were selected from a V-band mosaic obtained at the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) on 17/18 October 1993, with the primary selection criterion being $`V_{\mathrm{NTT}}<23`$. The seeing on this image was rather poor, $`1\stackrel{}{.}7`$ FWHM. In order to reduce contamination by stars, the preparatory shallow R-band images were carefully examined during all the CFHT runs; for runs 3 and 4, we took additional advantage of the excellent seeing of the deep UH8k I-band image.

All the CFHT observations were done with the Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS, Le Fèvre et al. mos (1994)) with the O300 grism. The cameras used during each run and the corresponding pixel scales and dispersions are listed in Table 1. Two to five exposures per mask were obtained, depending on the magnitudes of the selected objects in each mask.

Band-limiting filters, chosen such that prominent spectral features (for instance the Ca i H/K lines blueward of the 4000 Å break) fall into the band at the redshift of interest, allow stacking of several rows of spectra on one mask, thus increasing the number of spectra observable in a given time. This strategy has been successfully employed by e. g. Yee et al. (CNOC (1996), CNOC2 (2000)). However, spectra covering a larger range of wavelengths provide more secure redshift determinations since more absorption and emission lines can be taken into account. This is particularly important in the presence of artifacts caused by insufficient removal of cosmic ray hits. In the case of Cl0024+1654 at $`z=0.395`$, the 4000 Å break roughly coincides with the strong sky emission line \[O i\]$`\lambda `$5577, so that insufficient subtraction of the sky line might cause a problem in the redshift determination if only a limited wavelength band were available. Also, covering a wide wavelength range is essential in order to derive spectral types for the galaxies and analyse in detail the spectral properties of the cluster members. For these reasons we did not use band-limiting filters and the usable wavelength range was typically $`4500`$$`8500`$ Å, depending on signal-to-noise ratio and the quality of the sky subtraction at the red end of the spectral range, where the sky emission is dominated by molecular bands.

The observations at WHT were made with the Low Dispersion Survey Spectrograph (LDSS-2, Allington-Smith et al. ldss-2 (1994)), the med/blue grism and the Loral LOR1 detector. The usable wavelength range was $`4000`$$`7500`$ Å, somewhat bluer than for the MOS observations. All the LDSS-2 masks were covered by two exposures each.

We used $`1\mathrm{}`$ wide slits throughout, resulting in a resolution of $`13`$ Å, except for run 1 where the slit width used was $`1\stackrel{}{.}5`$ with a correspondingly worse resolution of $`20`$ Å.

## 3 Data reduction and analysis

### 3.1 Reduction of spectroscopic data

The spectra were reduced using the semiautomatic package multired (Le Fèvre et al. multired (1995)) which in turn uses standard Iraf tasks and treats each slit separately. The spectral images were de-biased and flat-field corrected in the standard way. A low-order (mostly linear) polynomial fit to the sky emission in the spatial direction was then subtracted for each individual exposure. During the fit most of the cosmic ray hits in the sky region of the spectral images were taken care of by a sigma-rejection algorithm (pixels with deviations of more than $`\pm 2\sigma `$ from the fit were rejected before refitting); nevertheless insufficiently rejected cosmics occasionally survived the fit to produce fake absorption features in the object spectrum.

Geometric distortions cause the true spatial/dispersion directions to deviate from the row/column directions of the CCD chip, especially at the edges of the field. Since sky fitting was done row-wise (column-wise for the WHT data), sky emission lines tend to be imperfectly subtracted. Isolated emission lines (in particular \[O i\]$`\lambda 5577`$, which roughly coincides with the 4000 Å break for galaxies at the redshift of Cl0024+1654) could simply be masked for the subsequent analysis of the spectrum, but the usable wavelength range in the red was effectively limited by the molecular band emission from the sky.

The individual exposures were then averaged into the final two-dimensional spectrum. In those cases where more than two exposures per mask were available, the highest pixel value was rejected, thus accounting for cosmic ray hits. The small number of exposures per mask made cosmic ray rejection difficult and imperfect. A cosmic ray hit on the object spectrum resulted in a fake emission feature, a hit in the sky area in a fake absorption feature. However, as argued in Section 3.2, cosmics do not in general influence the redshift determination. Finally, variance-weighted one-dimensional spectra were extracted from the combined spectral images, wavelength calibrated using lamp spectra (He/Ar at CFHT, Cu/Ar at WHT) and approximately flux-calibrated with long-slit spectra from spectro-photometric standard stars (listed in Table 1).

The wavelength calibration spectra were extracted using a straight trace (following the column/row direction of the CCD), unlike the corresponding object spectra, where the trace followed the flexure introduced by geometric camera distortions. We verified that this causes only negligible errors by re-calibrating several spectra with strong flexure with calibration spectra extracted using the same trace as for the object spectra.

We finally performed a check on the wavelength calibration by extracting three spectra per mask without sky subtraction and measuring the position of prominent sky lines using the calibration from the lamps. For the WHT masks this revealed systematic shifts, which are due to the fact that the lamp spectra were not taken immediately before or after the science exposures. The positioning of the masks in the mask holder was therefore not identical during lamp and science exposures. These systematic shifts translate to $`10^3`$ in terms of redshift and a correction for each mask was applied to all the redshifts determined from this mask. No such systematic effect was found for the CFHT masks.

Seven example spectra and the V-band images for the corresponding objects are shown in Fig. 2.

### 3.2 Redshift determination

Since a large fraction of the spectra in our sample have rather low signal-to-noise ratio, we decided to identify redshifts by eye, which is better at finding real absorption and emission lines amongst noise than automatic redshift identification techniques. Also, fake emission and absorption features due to cosmics could be identified this way by simply checking the original two-dimensional spectral images. All redshifts were identified by one of us (OC for runs 2-4, GS for run 1) and checked by at least one other member of the team. The redshifts (runs 2-4 only) given in Table 4 carry a flag which indicates a (somewhat subjective) level of confidence that the redshift identification is correct. “Secure/A” redshifts were determined from spectra where emission lines and/or several absorption lines are clearly seen, “uncertain/D” redshifts are based on a tentative identification of a single line or possibly several weak absorption lines, and “probable/B” and “possible/C” indicate intermediate levels of confidence.

In order to obtain a more objective estimate of the *measurement* (as opposed to *identification*) error of our redshifts, we used the cross-correlation technique implemented in the task xcsao in the Iraf package rvsao (Kurtz & Mink rvsao (1998)). In all cases, the by-eye redshift identification was fed to xcsao as the initial redshift estimate and the allowed redshift range was restricted to about $`\pm 5`$% around this redshift. In this sense, xcsao was forced to recover our redshift identification and we only used xcsao’s error estimate.

For large values of the correlation parameter, $`R>3`$ (Kurtz & Mink rvsao (1998)), we find that xcsao reproduces our input redshifts very well. The mean deviation between by-eye redshift and xcsao redshift is $`\overline{\left(z_{\mathrm{eye}}z_{\mathrm{xcsao}}\right)}=0.00018`$ with a scatter of 0.00037, corresponding to 80 km s-1 at the redshift of Cl0024. However, only 107 of our spectra achieve $`R>3`$ and the redshift distribution of these is not representative of the redshift distribution of the total sample, low-redshift objects being more reliably identified than objects at the cluster redshift or beyond. xcsao assigns an individual error estimate to each redshift, based on the width of the peak in the correlation function. For $`R>3`$, the median of the distribution of this error is at $`0.0003`$ (43 km s-1), with the bulk of error estimates at $`<0.0005`$.

However, these error estimates are only useful for our “best” spectra. In order to get a more reliable error estimate for all the spectra we can compare redshifts determined from multiple observations either during the same run, when the same object appears on different masks, or during different observing runs. The results of this intercomparison are shown in Table 2 for those pairs of runs with useful number $`N`$ of pairs: The mean absolute differences between the redshifts are of order $`1\times 10^3`$, with no marked difference between the values determined for all quality codes or “secure/A” redshifts only. We note that the slits at the “southern” ends of the WHT masks were consistently of rather poor quality, in the sense that the slit edges become quite rugged. Redshifts from these slits are therefore less accurate than those from the central and “northern” parts of the WHT masks or from the observing runs at CFHT. Taking this fact into account we estimate that most of our redshifts are accurate to about $`1\times 10^3`$. The majority of our spectra were obtained during observing runs 2 and 3; comparing the redshifts of objects observed during both these runs we find that the systematic shift $`\overline{\left(z_1z_2\right)}`$ between the observations is consistent with zero.

Finally we compare in Fig. 3 the redshifts for those 54 objects that were observed both by us and by Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)). For the majority of these objects the redshift measurements agree very well, however, there are five clear misidentifications, with redshift deviation of more than 0.01; these cases are discussed in detail in Sect. 3.4. Object 523 deviates by more than $`3\sigma `$ if the five misidentifications are dropped from the sample, so we exclude this object as well. The remaining 48 common objects have a mean redshift deviation of $`\overline{z_{\mathrm{D99}}z_{\mathrm{our}}}=0.0003`$ with a root mean square (RMS) scatter of $`\sigma =0.0015`$. The rms scatter is consistent with the estimate for our redshift error estimate of $`10^3`$, assuming that the redshifts given by Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) have similar accuracy. Again, there is no evidence for a systematic shift.

### 3.3 Spectroscopic measures

We measured equivalent widths for \[O ii\]$`\lambda 3727`$, \[O iii\]$`\lambda \lambda 4959,5007`$, H$`\alpha `$ (where within the wavelength range), H$`\beta `$ and H$`\delta `$, as well as the strength of the 4000Å break. \[O iii\], H$`\alpha `$ and H$`\beta `$ were measured semi-automatically, i. e. the continuum level was placed by visual inspection and the line integration limits were fixed at the values given in Table 3. The integration ranges for \[O iii\] and H$`\beta `$ are the same as those used by Dressler & Shectman (ewranges (1987)); the range for H$`\alpha `$ is taken from Couch et al. (halpha (2000)) and does not include the neighbouring \[N ii\] line.

\[O ii\] and H$`\delta `$ are important indicators of ongoing (Kennicutt kennicutt (1992)) and recently terminated (Abraham et al. abraham (1996)) star formation within galaxies and in particular provide essential information on the interaction of newly accreted galaxies with the cluster environment. We therefore adopted a more accurate way to determine the equivalent widths and in particular to estimate a level of significance for the strengths of these lines. We define our equivalent widths so that they are *positive* for emission lines:

$$W_\lambda =\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{int}}}{}}\frac{f_i\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}}{\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{int}}}{}}\frac{f_i}{\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}}N_{\mathrm{int}}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda \text{,}$$
(1)
where $`f_i`$ is the flux in pixel $`i`$, $`N_{\mathrm{int}}`$ the number of pixels in the integration range, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ is the wavelength dispersion in Å/pixel. The continuum level $`\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}`$ was estimated as the mean value within two wavelength intervals on either side of the line; pixels with values more than $`3\sigma `$ away from the mean level were iteratively rejected in order to avoid cosmic ray hits in the continuum region. The automatic measurement of the continuum level makes it possible to estimate an error on the corresponding equivalent widths, thus allowing an assessment of the detection significance of the line. For this purpose we model the noise as Poisson-distributed photon noise. This allows us to relate the variances on $`f_i`$ and $`\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}`$ to the single-pixel signal-to-noise ratio at flux level $`\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}`$, $`S/N=\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}/\sigma _\mathrm{c}`$ using the usual Poisson scaling $`\sigma ^2f`$ and $`\sigma \left(\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}\right)^2=\sigma _\mathrm{c}^2/N_\mathrm{c}`$ when averaged over $`N_\mathrm{c}`$ pixels. Adding the errors due to $`f_i`$ and $`\overline{f_\mathrm{c}}`$ in quadrature we thus obtain:

$`\sigma _{W_\lambda }^2=`$ (2)
$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{S}{N}}\right)^2\left[\left(W_\lambda +N_{\mathrm{int}}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda \right)\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda +{\displaystyle \frac{\left(W_\lambda +N_{\mathrm{int}}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda \right)^2}{N_\mathrm{c}}}\right].`$
Here the first term is due to the line integration and the second to the determination of the continuum level.

In the case of \[O ii\], the signal-to-noise ratio $`S/N`$ was determined between 3560 Å and 3680 Å, a region which is largely free from absorption lines. For H$`\delta `$, the signal-to-noise ratio was measured in the range 4050 Å to 4250 Å, where the line itself was excised between 4085 Å and 4115 Å. The latter $`S/N`$ was measured for every spectrum as a global indicator of the quality of the spectrum. The integration ranges correspond to those used by Abraham et al. (abraham (1996)). For H$`\delta `$ we used their “narrow” range.

The strength of the 4000 Å break is given as the ratio of the total flux in the range $`4050`$ Å$`<\lambda <4250`$ Å to the total flux within $`3750`$ Å$`<\lambda <3950`$ Å. These ranges include all the absorption lines.

All the wavelength ranges are in the rest-frame of the object. For spectra for which no redshift could be determined we only estimated the global $`S/N`$ assuming the cluster redshift $`z=0.395`$.

### 3.4 The catalogue

An excerpt from the final catalogue is shown for reference in Table 4, the full catalogue is available in electronic form at the Centre de Données Stellaire (CDS)444http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cats/J.A+A.htx. All entries from the catalogue are marked with their redshifts in Figs. 4a-4h.

In detail the contents of Table 4 are as follows:

Column 1: Object number. The catalogue is sorted by relative right ascension (Column 2).

Column 2/3: Right ascension and declination relative to $`\alpha =00^\mathrm{h}26^\mathrm{m}35\stackrel{s}{.}70`$, $`\delta =17\mathrm{°}09\mathrm{}43\stackrel{}{.}06`$ (J2000), given in arcsec.

Column 4: Redshift.

Column 5: Redshift reliability code: A = “secure”, B = “probable”, C = “possible”, D = “uncertain”, S = “star”. For objects taken from Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) and not observed by us, we give their quality code (ranging from 1 to 4).

Column 6: $`V`$ magnitude (SExtractor MAG\_BEST), from CFH12k image.

Column 7: $`VI`$ colour, measured in 14 pixel ($`2\stackrel{}{.}8`$) diameter apertures from the CFH12k ($`V`$) and UH8k ($`I`$) images. Occasionally $`I`$ magnitudes (and hence $`VI`$ colour) are not available due to the object falling on a gap between two chips of the UH8k (see Sect. 2.1).

Column 8: \[O ii\]$`\lambda 3727`$ equivalent width (in Å). The error was estimated using Eq. 2. We use the convention that equivalent widths are positive for emission and negative for absorption lines. For objects taken from Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) and not observed by us, we remeasured the equivalent widths ourselves from their spectra, so as to provide homogeneous equivalent width measurements.

Column 9: \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$ equivalent width (in Å).

Column 10: H$`\alpha `$ equivalent width (in Å).

Column 11: H$`\beta `$ equivalent width (in Å). XS Column 12: H$`\delta `$ equivalent width (in Å). The error was estimated using Eq. 2.

Column 13: Strength of the 4000 Å break.

Column 14: Signal-to-noise ratio measured between 4050 and 4250 Å.

Column 15: Number(s) of the observing run(s) during which the object was observed (cf. Table 1). Objects observed by Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) are marked by “D” and the number from their catalogue.

Column 16: Lines that could be identified in the spectrum/spectra.

We provide new spectra for 618 objects, of which 581 have redshifts. The global success rate is therefore 94%. Not all redshifts are equally secure though: We qualify 435 of our redshifts (70%) as “secure” (quality code A), 28 (5%) as “uncertain” (code D) and 86 (14%) of intermediate quality. 34 objects (5%) turned out to be stars. The fraction of “secure” redshifts is 83% for foreground galaxies at $`z<0.37`$, 82% for galaxies around the cluster redshift ($`0.37<z<0.41`$), and drops to 53% for galaxies at higher redshift.

For completeness, we include in the catalogue the redshifts provided by Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)). The corresponding entry number from their catalogue (prefixed by ‘D’) is listed in column 15 of our catalogue. The catalogue as published by Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) contains 130 entries, of which 107 are cluster members. However, we noticed several errors in their catalogue, reducing the number of distinct objects to 125555 Dressler et al. (dressler2 (1999)) failed to make several identifications within their sample: thus D19 and D66 seem to be the same object, as are D21 and D65, D113 and D120, D122 and D125, D22 and D73. . 54 of these objects were observed by us as well, usually with concordant redshifts, see the discussion in Sec. 3.2 and Fig. 3. There were however five problematic cases: Dressler et al. give the redshift for object 376 (D7) as 0.3755, whereas our spectrum indicates a secure 0.3955. We assume that this is a typographical error in the Dressler et al. list and adopt our value. Our spectrum for object 416 (D33) indicates $`z=0.3895`$ as opposed to their 0.4035. Since Dressler et al. only give this a quality code ‘3’, we adopt our value. Object 289 (D109) is similarly uncertain. Object 466 should be identical to Dressler et al.’s object D37, however the spectra are completely different giving secure redshifts of 0.3916 and 0.1840 respectively. We have to assume therefore that D37 has wrong coordinates. A similar problem occurs for D130 (our 237).

Adding the 69 objects which were observed by Dressler et al. alone increases the size of the catalogue to 687 objects, with 650 identified redshifts.

### 3.5 Completeness

Fig. 5 presents colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for the photometric (for the overlap region of the CFH12k and UH8k images) and the spectroscopic catalogues. For the latter catalogue we also show separate CMDs for foreground galaxies at $`z<0.37`$, background galaxies at $`z>0.41`$, galaxies at the cluster redshift ($`0.37<z<0.41`$) and for a newly identified group of galaxies at $`z=0.495`$ (see Sect. 4).

The primary criterion for the candidate selection for the spectroscopic survey was $`V<23`$. The completeness in $`V`$ magnitude of the final catalogue is shown in Fig. 6, where for each galaxy from the spectroscopic catalogue we count the number of objects in a bin of $`\pm 0.25\mathrm{mag}`$ around the galaxy magnitude in both the spectroscopic and photometric catalogues (the latter restricted to the survey area as outlined in Fig. 7) and define their ratio as the total completeness at the given magnitude. Between $`V20`$ and $`V22`$ the completeness is roughly constant at $`45`$% and drops rapidly for fainter magnitudes. Restricting the same analysis to the central area within $`3\mathrm{}`$ of the cluster centre (using larger bins of $`\pm 0.5\mathrm{mag}`$) shows that in this region the completeness exceeds 80% between $`V20`$ and $`V22`$.

A visual impression of the variation of the completeness across the survey area is given in Fig. 7 where we use an adaptive top-hat (its radius at any given point of a grid is the geometric mean of the distances to the 10th and 11th nearest objects with spectroscopy) to compute the ratio of the numbers of objects with spectroscopy (fixed to 10) and the number of objects in the photometric catalogue. In order to have samples with well-defined (though a posteriori) photometric selection limits we restrict the spectroscopic and photometric catalogues for this purpose to subsamples with $`20<V<23`$ and $`0.6<VI<2.4`$. As Fig. 5 shows, this region of the colour-magnitude plane encloses virtually all the cluster members in the spectroscopic catalogue. Within our restricted sample the separation between stars and galaxies within the photometric catalogue is fairly straightforward using SExtractor’s CLASS\_STAR parameter. Within a total of 2722 objects we find 312 stars (with an error of about $`\pm 10`$ due to ambiguous cases) or 11.5%. Since useful shape information was not available for the preparation of all the spectroscopic observing runs (about 5% of the objects in the spectroscopic catalogue are stars), the whole photometric sample is used in Fig. 7. The completeness values are therefore actually underestimates if interpreted as completeness for spectroscopic coverage of galaxies alone. The cluster centre is sampled at $`>70`$% completeness in a region of about $`80\mathrm{}\times 150\mathrm{}`$.

## 4 Discussion

The three-dimensional distribution of the galaxies in the redshift sample is shown in Fig. 8 in the form of wedge diagrams, where the angular position of each object on the sky has been converted to proper distance from the line of sight, appropriate for the given redshift in a $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ world model. The cluster Cl0024+1654 shows up clearly as a sheet at $`z0.4`$. The expanded views show that Cl0024+1654 is not a simple isolated cluster but that there is a foreground “clump” at $`z=0.38`$, superimposed onto the main cluster and connected to the latter via a narrow bridge. In a companion paper (Czoske et al. paper2 (2001)) we discuss an interpretation of this structure as being due to the foreground cluster having passed through the main cluster.

We find a pair of compact groups of galaxies at $`z=0.495`$ about $`10\mathrm{}`$ to the north-east of the centre of Cl0024+1654 (see Fig. 8 at $`x1`$ Mpc, $`y2`$ Mpc). The northern group includes 8 galaxies, centered at $`574\mathrm{}`$ north and $`203\mathrm{}`$ east of the cluster centre, the southern group includes 6 galaxies centered at $`369\mathrm{}`$ north and $`250\mathrm{}`$ (median positions); the projected distance between the groups is thus $`740h^1\mathrm{kpc}`$. The mean redshifts are $`\overline{z_\mathrm{N}}=0.4921`$ and $`\overline{z_\mathrm{S}}=0.4970`$, the formal velocity dispersions $`\sigma _\mathrm{N}=657\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and $`\sigma _\mathrm{S}=647\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Student’s t-test rejects the hypothesis that the two groups have the same mean redshift at 99% confidence, so we assume that we are really seeing two separate groups. The velocity dispersions are presumably enhanced by tidal interaction between the groups.

Fig. 9 shows colour images of the northern and southern groups created from the I- and V-band CCD images. The galaxy at $`z=0.4907`$ is surrounded by three objects of similar, blue colour. It is tempting to interpret this group as multiple images of the same background object. In this case, using the curvature radius ($`5\mathrm{}`$) as an estimate for the Einstein radius and $`z_\mathrm{s}=1`$ as a rough guess for the redshift of the background source, we obtain $`5.8\times 10^{12}h^1M_{\mathrm{}}`$ for the mass within this radius.

Another overdensity in Fig. 8 occurs at $`z0.18`$. These galaxies are however distributed fairly uniformly across the field with no obvious spatial concentration and are therefore just part of the general large-scale structure in the Universe.

In the first detection of a coherent shear field around a cluster of galaxies, Bonnet et al. (BMF (1994)) found a signal to the north-east of the centre of Cl0024+1654, indicating a concentration of mass at a point where no overdensity of galaxies is apparent in the two-dimensional images. The direction to this dark “clump” is indicated by a circle in Fig. 4b and by the dashed line in Fig. 8. There is no significant over-density along this line which could explain the spatial tightness of the signal observed by Bonnet et al.

## 5 Conclusions

In this paper we present a catalogue of spectroscopic data for 687 objects in a field of $`21\times 25\mathrm{arcmin}^2`$ around the centre of the cluster of galaxies Cl0024+1654 at $`z0.395`$, 295 of which lie in the vicinity of the cluster itself, in the range $`0.37<z<0.41`$. The completeness of the sample exceeds 80% around the cluster centre for $`V<22`$, dropping to $`70`$% for $`V<!23`$. The mean completeness over the whole field is about 45% down to $`V=22`$. This is therefore one of the largest spectroscopic surveys available for a cluster at $`z0.2`$ and the largest at $`z0.4`$. Apart from redshifts the catalogue lists photometric data and equivalent widths for five lines as well as the strength of the 4000 Å break, important for determining present and recent star forming activity. The catalogue represents a unique database for investigations into the structure of a medium-redshift cluster of galaxies and its environment.

We report the discovery of a binary group of galaxies at $`z0.495`$, which includes a gravitational arc candidate. A further overdensity in the redshift distribution at $`z0.18`$ can at present not be attributed to a collapsed structure, although we cannot exclude the possibility that a centre for such a structure exists outside the field covered by our survey. None of the structures seen in the redshift distribution seems to be able to explain the coherent shear signal at $`6\mathrm{}`$ to the north-east of the projected centre of Cl0024+1654, detected by Bonnet et al. (BMF (1994)).

The main result of this project is that Cl0024+1654 is not a simple isolated cluster, as has hitherto been assumed in interpreting kinematical, lensing and X-ray data. Instead there is a second, less massive cluster projected onto the centre of the main cluster. The separation of Cl0024+1654 into two components has strong consequences for the interpretation of observational data and should in particular help to resolve the well-known discrepancy between masses determined using different methods for this cluster (Soucail et al. soucail (2000)). The structure of Cl0024+1654, a scenario for possible interaction between the main and foreground clusters and the effects of this interaction on the properties of the cluster galaxy populations will be discussed in more detail in the second paper of this series (Czoske et al. paper2 (2001)). The photometric data obtained in conjunction with this project will be used by Mayen et al. (mayen (2001)) to investigate the depletion of background objects due to the gravitational lensing effect of Cl0024+1654.

###### Acknowledgements.

OC thanks the European Commission for generous support under grant number ER-BFM-BI-CT97-2471. JPK thanks CNRS for support and acknowledges a European Large Scale Facility grant for the WHT observation. This work was supported by the TMR Network “Gravitational Lensing: New Constraints on Cosmology and the Distribution of Dark Matter”666http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/lensnet of the European Commission under contract No. ER-BFM-RX-CT97-0172. TJB wishes to thank Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées for hospitality.