The DESI survey will observe more than 8 million candidate luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the redshift range 0.3<z<1.0. Here we present a preliminary version of the DESI LRG target selection developed using Legacy Surveys Data Release 8 g, r, z and W1 photometry. This selection yields a sample with a uniform surface density of ∼600 deg−2and very low predicted stellar contamination and redshift failure rates. During DESI Survey Validation, updated versions of this selection will be tested and optimized.
@article{arxiv.2010.11282,
title = {Preliminary Target Selection for the DESI Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) Sample},
author = {Rongpu Zhou and Jeffrey A. Newman and Kyle S. Dawson and Daniel J. Eisenstein and David D. Brooks and Arjun Dey and Biprateep Dey and Yutong Duan and Sarah Eftekharzadeh and Enrique Gaztañaga and Robert Kehoe and Martin Landriau and Michael E. Levi and Timothy C. Licquia and Aaron M. Meisner and John Moustakas and Adam D. Myers and Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille and Claire Poppett and Francisco Prada and Anand Raichoor and David J. Schlegel and Michael Schubnell and Ryan Staten and Gregory Tarlé and Christophe Yèche},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.11282},
year = {2020}
}