Studying the Evolution of Large-scale Structure with the Vimos-vlt Deep Survey

The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS) currently offers a unique combination of depth, angular size and number of measured galaxies among surveys of the distant Universe: ∼ 11, 000 spectra over 0.5 deg to IAB = 24 (VVDS-Deep), 35, 000 spectra over ∼ 7 deg 2 to IAB = 22.5 (VVDS-Wide). The current “First Epoch” data from VVDS-Deep already allow investigations of galaxy clustering and its dependence on galaxy properties to be extended to redshifts ∼ 1.2 − 1.5, in addition to measuring accurately evolution in the properties of galaxies up to z ∼ 4. This paper concentrates on the main results obtained so far on galaxy clustering. L∗B galaxies at z ≃ 1.5 show a correlation length r0 = 3.6 ± 0.7. As a consequence, the linear galaxy bias at fixed luminosity rises over the same range from the value bL ≃ 1 measured locally, to bL = 1.5 ± 0.1. The interplay of galaxy and structure evolution in producing this observation is discussed in some detail. Galaxy clustering is found to depend on galaxy luminosity also at z ≃ 1, but luminous galaxies at this redshift show a significantly steeper small-scale correlation function than their z = 0 counterparts. Finally, red galaxies remain more clustered than blue galaxies out to similar redshifts, with a nearly constant relative bias among the two classes, brel ≃ 1.4, despite the rather dramatic evolution in the color-density relation over the same redshift range.