RUI: Quasar Investigations

这笔拨款是为了支持将离散物体的功率谱分析方法从二维扩展到三维的研究，然后将所产生的程序应用于类星体位置的分析。新的程序应该避免与分布等距抽样相关的问题(只有超过奈奎斯特等级的尺度的变化才能被检测到)，并充分利用所有可用的数据。它还将提供两点相关函数的另一种选择，作为查看数据的一种方式。由于分布的功率谱是自相关函数的傅里叶变换，三维功率谱应该等价于类星体自相关函数的计算。该项目的主要数据库将是新的伯比奇和休伊特(1987)准恒星天体目录，其中将选择子集。这一新方法的应用应该会对类星体在三维空间中聚集的规模这个明显令人头疼的问题有所了解。

This grant is to suppport research to extend the method of power spectrum analysis of discrete objects from two to three dimensions, and then to apply the resulting procedure to the analysis of quasar positions. The new procedure should avoid the problem associated with equidistant sampling of a distribution (only variations on scales exceeding the Nyquist scale can be detected), and make full use of all the data available. It will also provide an alternative to the two-point correlation function as a way of looking at the data. Since the power spectrum of a distribution is the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation function, the three dimensional power spectrum should be equivalent to the evaluation of the quasar autocorrelation function. The principal data base for the project will be the new Burbidge and Hewitt (1987) catalog of quasi-stellar objects, from which subsets will be selected. The application of the new procedure should shed some light on the apparently vexing question of the scale of quasar clustering in three dimensions.