2.30 pm Monday February 21 in Curia II.
The relative clustering of galaxies of different types contains information on the nature of galaxy formation. For example, hydrodynamic models of galaxy formation predict a large scatter in the relationship between the density fields of early- and late-type galaxies, corresponding to a correlation coefficient r=0.5--0.8 (where unity corresponds to no scatter). Meanwhile, semi-analytic models predict correlation coefficients closer to r=0.9. I develop a maximum likelihood method of analyzinbg the joint counts-in-cells of early and late-type galaxies, and apply it to the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS), finding r=0.87. In addition, I detect errors in the selection function of LCRS galaxies, implying that the true value is closer to r=0.95. I discuss the consequences of this result for theories of galaxy formation.