The angular clustering of galaxy pairs

Abstract

We identify close pairs of galaxies from 278 deg(2) of Sloan Digital Sky Survey commissioning imaging data. The pairs are drawn from a sample of 330,041 galaxies with 18 < r* < 20. We determine the angular correlation function of galaxy pairs and find it to be stronger than the correlation function of single galaxies by a factor of 2.9 +/- 0.4. The two correlation functions have the same logarithmic slope of 0.77. We invert Limber's equation to estimate the three-dimensional correlation functions; we find clustering lengths of r(0) = 4.2 +/- 0.4 h(-1) Mpc for galaxies and 7.8 +/- 0.7 h(-1) Mpc for galaxy pairs. These results agree well with the global richness dependence of the correlation functions of galaxy systems.