We compare three methods to measure the count-in-cell probability density function of galaxies in a spectroscopic redshift survey. From this comparison we found that when the sampling is low (the average number of object per cell is around unity) it is necessary to use a parametric method to model the galaxy distribution. We used a set of mock catalogues of VIPERS, in order to verify if we were able to reconstruct the cell-count probability distribution once the observational strategy is applied. We find that in the simulated catalogues, the probability distribution of galaxies is better represented by a Gamma expansion than a Skewed Log-Normal. Finally, we correct the cell-count probability distribution function from the angular selection effect of the VIMOS instrument and study the redshift and absolute magnitude dependency of the underlying galaxy density function in VIPERS from redshift 0.5 to 1.1. We found very weak evolution of the probability density distribution function and that it is well approximated, independently from the chosen tracers, by a Gamma distribution.
@article{arxiv.1505.00442,
title = {The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): On the correct recovery of the count-in-cell probability distribution function},
author = {J. Bel and E. Branchini and C. Di Porto and O. Cucciati and B. R. Granett and A. Iovino and S. de la Torre and C. Marinoni and L. Guzzo and L. Moscardini and A. Cappi and U. Abbas and C. Adami and S. Arnouts and M. Bolzonella and D. Bottini and J. Coupon and I. Davidzon and G. De Lucia and A. Fritz and P. Franzetti and M. Fumana and B. Garilli and O. Ilbert and J. Krywult and V. Le Brun and O. Le Fèvre and D. Maccagni and K. Małek and F. Marulli and H. J. McCracken and L. Paioro and M. Polletta and A. Pollo and H. Schlagenhaufer and M. Scodeggio and L. A. M. Tasca and R. Tojeiro and D. Vergani and A. Zanichelli and A. Burden and A. Marchetti and Y. Mellier and R. C. Nichol and J. A. Peacock and W. J. Percival and S. Phleps and M. Wolk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.00442},
year = {2016}
}