text:
# How Stochastic is the Relative Bias Between Galaxy Types?

## 1 Motivation

Galaxies of different morphologies have different spatial distributions, as first noted by Hubble (1936). Early-type galaxies, such as ellipticals and S0s, are highly clustered and account for 90% of galaxies in the cores of rich clusters; late-type galaxies, such as spirals and irregulars, are less clustered and make up 70% of galaxies in the field (Dressler 1980; Postman & Geller 1984; Whitmore, Gilmore, & Jones 1993). A general way of expressing the relationship between the density fields of galaxies of different types on any scale $`R`$ is with the joint probability distribution $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$; that is, the probability at any location of finding an overdensity $`\delta _e`$ of early-type galaxies and an overdensity $`\delta _l`$ of late-type galaxies. This quantity is analogous to the joint probability distribution of galaxy and mass density introduced by Dekel & Lahav (1999).

The traditional method of measuring the properties of $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ has been to compare the amplitude of the fluctuations in each density field, using the correlation functions or the power spectra. By these measures, the level of fluctuations in ellipticals is stronger than that of spirals by a factor of 1.3–1.5 (Davis & Geller 1976; Giovanelli, Haynes, & Chincarini 1986; Santiago & Strauss 1992; Loveday et al. 1996; Hermit et al. 1996; Guzzo et al. 1997). These relative clustering properties are successfully reproduced by current models of galaxy formation. For example, Blanton et al. (1999) examined hydrodynamical simulations and identified galaxies as dense, rapidly cooling clumps of gas. Older galaxies, which correspond to early-types, turned out to be clustered more strongly than younger galaxies, which correspond to late-types. The relative bias factor, $`b\sigma _e/\sigma _l`$, where $`\sigma ^2\delta ^2`$, is approximately 1.5 between these populations. Semi-analytic models, which follow halos in collisionless $`N`$-body simulations and use simple models for star-formation and feedback inside each halo and for the effect of halo mergers, find similar results (Somerville et al. 1999).

However, Blanton et al. (1999) also found that there was considerable scatter between the two density fields; that is, that there was not a one-to-one relationship between the number of old galaxies in a region to the number of young galaxies. A measure of this scatter is the correlation coefficient $`r\delta _e\delta _l/\sigma _e\sigma _l`$ between the early-type overdensity field $`\delta _e`$ and the late-type overdensity field $`\delta _l`$. In the simulations, $`r0.5`$$`0.8`$. On the other hand, the semi-analytic models of Somerville et al. (1999) find that the correlation coefficient $`r0.9`$; that is, they find very little scatter. The essential difference between the predictions of this model and that of the hydrodynamic model is the effect of the temperature history of the gas in the hydrodynamic simulations and its relationship with large-scale structure. Thus, one can use the correlation coefficient between different galaxy types to distinguish between these models of galaxy formation.

Measuring this scatter requires a probe of $`f(\delta _e|\delta _l)`$ which differs from the traditional statistics mentioned above. For example, two completely unrelated density fields ($`r=0`$) can have the same correlation function. To detect the scatter, one must compare the density fields point by point, not just compare the overall levels of the fluctuations. A direct approach to constraining the properties of $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ is to measure the related joint probability distribution $`P(N_e,N_l)`$ of finding $`N_e`$ early-type and $`N_l`$ late-type galaxies in a single cell of size $`R`$. After all, this latter probability is simply $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ convolved with Poisson distributions. If one notes that

$$f(\delta _e,\delta _l)=f(\delta _l|\delta _e)f(\delta _e),$$
(1)
then one can write

$`P(N_e,N_l)`$ $`={\displaystyle 𝑑\delta _e\frac{N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}^{N_e}(1+\delta _e)^{N_e}}{N_e!}e^{N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}(1+\delta _e)}f(\delta _e)}`$ (3)
$`\times {\displaystyle }d\delta _l{\displaystyle \frac{N_{l,\mathrm{exp}}^{N_l}(1+\delta _l)^{N_l}}{N_l!}}e^{N_{l,\mathrm{exp}}(1+\delta _l)}f(\delta _l|\delta _e),`$
where $`N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}`$ and $`N_{l,\mathrm{exp}}`$ are the average number of galaxies of each type expected in a cell of a given volume (and given selection criteria). Naturally, one can integrate Equation (3) over $`N_l`$ to obtain:

$$P(N_e)=𝑑\delta _e\frac{N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}^{N_e}(1+\delta _e)^{N_e}}{N_e!}e^{N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}(1+\delta _e)}f(\delta _e),$$
(4)
the probability distribution of counts of early-type galaxies. As I show below, one can use Equation 3 to devise a maximum likelihood method to fit for $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$, and Equation 4 to fit for $`f(\delta _e)`$.

Equation (3) provides a direct probe of the relationship between galaxy density fields $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$, including its nonlinearity and scatter. Consider for contrast the work of Benoist et al. (1999), who infer nonlinearity in the relative bias of galaxies of different luminosities in the Southern Sky Redshift Survey from the scale dependence of the higher-order moments of the density fields. Using the same data, one could instead compare the observed $`P(N_e,N_l)`$ to models and detect nonlinearity more directly. Furthermore, the joint distribution contains more information than a comparison of the moments of each density field. While moments of the density field yield averaged information about the fluctuations, $`P(N_e,N_l)`$ yields a point-by-point comparison of two density fields, which can be much more powerful (Santiago & Strauss 1992). For instance, one can use this comparison to determine whether the effects detected by Benoist et al. (1999) are actually due to nonlinearity (as they propose), or perhaps due properties of the scatter in the relationship between low luminosity and high luminosity galaxies.

In this paper, I perform an maximum-likelihood analysis of this joint distribution for different spectral types of galaxies in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS), using cells with volumes approximately equal to that of cubes 25 $`h^1`$ Mpc on a side. A similar analysis has been performed on the LCRS by Tegmark & Bromley (1999; hereafter TB99), to which I will compare my results throughout. Essentially, their method calculates the second moments of $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$, namely $`\sigma _l^2\delta _l^2`$, the variance of the density field of late-type galaxies, $`\sigma _e^2\delta _e^2`$, the variance of early-type galaxies, and $`r\delta _e\delta _l/\sigma _e\sigma _l`$, the correlation coefficient between the two fields, which is unity if the fields are perfectly correlated and zero if the fields are completely uncorrelated. As I will show below, calculating second moments is probably not sufficient on the scales which TB99 probe ($`5`$$`10`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc), because it does not correctly account for the fact that density fields cannot be negative. For this reason, the resulting $`r`$ may overestimate the degree of scatter in the relationship between the two fields. On larger scales where $`\sigma 1`$, these differences would of course be much reduced. Furthermore, the moments method also yields no information on how nonlinear the relationship between the density fields of the two galaxy types is, which the maximum likelihood method described here will. Finally, I have detected important effects concerning the galaxy selection function which affect the results of this analysis and have consequences for the interpretation of TB99 and other measurement of large-scale structure in the LCRS.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, I describe the details of the LCRS. In Section 3, I describe the method used to calculate the selection function for the survey. In Section 4, I describe in detail the maximum likelihood analysis of the counts-in-cells. In Section 5, I present the results of fitting for the relationship between the different galaxy types and demonstrate the presence of systematic errors in the selection of galaxies in this survey. In Section 6, I describe the results of an analysis of mock catalogs, in order to quantify a number of possible statistical and systematic effects as well as to evaluate the importance of cosmic variance. I conclude in Section 7.

## 2 Galaxies in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey

The LCRS (Shectman et al. 1996) consists of around 25,000 galaxy redshifts with a median of $`z0.1`$, covering an area of about 700 deg2 on the sky. Three long slices ($`1.5^{}\times 80^{}`$) were surveyed in the North Galactic Cap, and three in the South Galactic cap. Within each hemisphere, the slices had the same right-ascension limits but were separated by several degrees in the declination direction. $`R`$-band photometry was obtained at the Las Campanas Swope 1m telescope using three different CCDs; spectra were taken at the Las Campanas Du Pont 2.5m telescope, first with a 50-fiber MOS and later with a 112-fiber MOS. The galaxies in the 50-fiber MOS fields were selected between $`16<m<17.3`$; the galaxies in the 112-fiber MOS fields were selected between $`15<m<17.7`$. In addition, a magnitude-dependent central surface-brightness cut was applied in order to avoid putting fibers onto galaxies unlikely to yield useful spectra. This cut takes the form:

$$m_c<m_{c,\mathrm{cut}}0.5(m_{\mathrm{max}}m),$$
(5)
where $`m_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the faint magnitude limit, $`m_c`$ is a central aperture magnitude consisting of the flux within a two pixel radius of the center of the image, and $`m_{c,\mathrm{cut}}`$ is 18.85 for the 112-fiber fields and 18.15 for the 50-fiber fields. Since each of the CCDs had a different pixel size, the size of the aperture with which $`m_c`$ is calculated varies within the survey between about 3′′ and 4′′ in diameter. The central magnitude cut excludes about 12% of the detected galaxies. As in all redshift surveys, this surface brightness cut can affect the relationship between the luminosity function and the selection function, since the selection is not purely based on apparent magnitude. Below, I test the dependence of my results on this cut.

Bromley et al. (1998) have used a spectral classification scheme to divide the LCRS galaxies into six “clans.” Their method performs a singular-value decomposition (SVD) on the set of galaxy spectra (converted to rest wavelengths) to obtain an orthogonal set of galaxy “eigenspectra.” They found that the galaxy spectra form a well-defined one-dimensional locus when projected onto the two-dimensional plane defined by the two most significant eigenspectra. The “clans” are defined by each galaxy’s position along this locus. The spectra of the “late-type” clans more closely resemble the spectra of emission-line galaxies with young stellar populations, while the spectra of “early-type” clans have more prominent absorption features. Clans are labeled from 1 to 6, in order of increasing “lateness” of the spectra. For my purposes, I will split the galaxies into just two groups: an early-type group consisting of clans 1 and 2 and a late-type group consisting of clans 3 through 6. I place absolute magnitude limits on the early-type group of $`22.5<M<18.8`$ and on the late-type group of $`22.0<M<18.5`$. Outside of these limits there are only a handful of galaxies and it is risky to determine the luminosity function and to calculate the selection function there. This procedure yields about 10,000 galaxies in each group. I show the spatial distribution of each type of galaxy in Figures 1a and 1b.

The geometry of the LCRS complicates an attempt to perform a counts-in-cells analysis on it. To do so, I create 14 redshift shells, each with an equal volume; thus, the shells at higher redshift have a shorter radial extent. Figure 2 shows the boundaries of these shells. In the angular dimension, I divide the survey into cells which are 3 MOS fields on each side. In the right ascension direction, the fields are adjacent; in the declination direction, the fields from the three slices in each Galactic hemisphere are combined. The radial spokes in Figure 2 are representative of the division in the right ascension direction, although the actual cells are somewhat more complicated, because the MOS fields are not all perfectly aligned in right ascension. This procedure produces 518 cells total, each with a volume equivalent to a 15 $`h^1`$ Mpc radius sphere, of about cubical dimensions at $`z0.1`$ (except for the gaps in the declination direction). The average number of galaxies in each cell of each type is about 20, meaning that the average contribution of Poisson noise to the variance is about $`0.05`$, though the actual contribution varies considerably with radius due to the selection function. A reasonable variance of the underlying density field at these scales in standard cosmological models is about $`0.25`$, meaning the Poisson contribution to the variance is only about 20%.

## 3 Selection Function

The selection function for a flux-limited survey is the fraction of galaxies in a given absolute magnitude range which are within the flux limits at a given redshift. If one considers galaxies with luminosities in the range between $`L_{\mathrm{min},0}`$ and $`L_{\mathrm{max},0}`$, and take the luminosity function $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$ to be normalized in that range, one can write the selection function:

$$\varphi (z)=_{L_{\mathrm{min}}(z)}^{L_{\mathrm{max}}(z)}𝑑L\mathrm{\Phi }(L)f_g(m)f_t,$$
(6)
where $`L_{\mathrm{min}}(z)`$ and $`L_{\mathrm{max}}(z)`$ are the minimum and maximum luminosities visible at redshift $`z`$, given the flux limits of the field under consideration, and $`m`$ is the apparent magnitude corresponding to $`L`$ and $`z`$. $`f_t`$ and $`f_g(m)`$ contain information on the incompleteness of the survey. $`f_t`$ is the sampled fraction of galaxies in the current field; that is, the fraction of galaxies within the stated flux limits whose redshifts were obtained, for each field. Galaxies are missed for a number of reasons: the limited number of fibers, the central magnitude cut, the fact that fibers cannot be placed closer than 55”, and the failure to determine redshifts from spectra. One must account for the fact that these effects are not distributed evenly in apparent magnitude (in practice, due mostly to the magnitude-dependence of redshift failures). To do so, I adjust the probability of observing a galaxy by a factor $`f_g(m)`$ which is the completeness fraction at each apparent magnitude (normalized to unity, since $`f_t`$ already accounts for the total number of missing galaxies).

Thus, one’s task is to calculate the luminosity function given the survey’s various selection effects. Although Bromley et al. (1998) and Lin et al. (1996) have already published luminosity functions for different galaxy types in the LCRS, for a number of reasons I was motivated to reexamine the determination of the luminosity and selection functions. In particular, some features of the selection functions seemed suspicious; in fact, this suspicious behavior remains in my analysis, and I will describe it in detail later. I calculated the luminosity function using the standard iterative, nonparametric maximum likelihood technique described in detail in Efstathiou, Ellis, & Peterson (1988). Their technique is based on maximizing the probability $`p(L|z)`$ of having observed each galaxy of luminosity $`L`$ at its given redshift $`z`$. If the galaxy luminosity function is $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$, a galaxy at redshift $`z_j`$ and having luminosity $`L_j`$ is observed with a probability per unit redshift and luminosity of:

$$p(L_j,z_j)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Phi }(L_j)\rho (z_j)f_g(m_j)f_{t,j}& \mathrm{if}m_{\mathrm{min},j}<m_j<m_{\mathrm{max},j},\\ 0& \mathrm{otherwise}.\end{array}$$
(7)
Here, $`f_g(m_j)`$ and $`f_{t,j}`$ are as defined above, $`\rho (z_j)`$ is the density of galaxies at redshift $`z_j`$, and $`m_{\mathrm{min},j}`$ and $`m_{\mathrm{max},j}`$ vary depending on what MOS field the galaxy is in, since each field has different flux limits. In order to relate apparent magnitudes $`m`$ to absolute magnitudes $`M`$ and luminosities $`L`$, I assume a flat universe with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$, which yields a distance modulus:

$$DM(z)=mM=25+5\mathrm{log}_{10}\left[x(1+z)\right]+K(z),$$
(8)
where the comoving distance is

$$x=\frac{2c}{H_0}\left[1\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+z}}\right],$$
(9)
and the $`K`$-correction is of the form:

$$K(z)=2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}(1+z).$$
(10)
This $`K`$-correction is approximately equivalent to that which is appropriate for Sbc galaxies (Frei & Gunn 1994). Since the entire analysis is independent of the value of $`H_0`$, I will for simplicity assume the value of 100 km/s/Mpc.

Given the joint probability in Equation (7), the conditional probability of observing a galaxy of luminosity $`L_j`$ given its redshift $`z_j`$ is then:

$$p(L_j|z_j)=\frac{p(L_j,z_j)}{p(z_j)}=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_j)f_g(m_j)}{_{L_{\mathrm{min},j}}^{L_{\mathrm{max},j}}𝑑L\mathrm{\Phi }(L)f_g(m)},$$
(11)
where the limits on the integral are determined by the apparent magnitude limits in each field, as implied by Equation (7). Note that this estimator is density-independent, as all reference to a density field $`\rho (z)`$ or the angularly varying sampling fraction $`f_t`$ drops out. This approach differs somewhat from that of Lin et al. (1996), which weights the densest regions more heavily.

In the Appendix, I describe in detail the method for maximizing this probability and for calculating the normalization of the luminosity function $`n_1`$. Using the derived luminosity function and its normalization, one can calculate the selection function and, from that, quantities such as the expected distribution of number with redshift or the expected counts in cells. I perform this fit separately for each combination of MOS field type and Galactic hemisphere, and for the early- and late-type galaxies separately. I will give results not in terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ itself, but in terms of the luminosity function expressed in logarithmic intervals of luminosity and normalized to the average density:

$$\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}=n_1\mathrm{ln}10L\mathrm{\Phi }.$$
(12)
## 4 Fitting a Counts-in-Cells Distribution

Here I describe a maximum likelihood method for constraining the relative clustering properties of early and late-type galaxies, assuming models for the density distribution $`f(\delta _e)`$ and the relative bias $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$. I will assume $`f(\delta _e)`$ is distributed as a log-normal. For $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$, I describe a number of deterministic models as well as a model which includes scatter.

### 4.1 Defining the Likelihood

Let us assume that one has divided a galaxy redshift survey into cells and counted the numbers of early- and late-type galaxies, denoted $`N_{e,i}`$ and $`N_{l,i}`$, in each cell $`i`$. (I describe in Section 2 how I do so for the LCRS). Given the selection function of the survey, which may depend on angle as well as redshift, I define the expected count in cell $`i`$ of early-type galaxies:

$$N_{e,\mathrm{exp},i}=𝑑V_in_e\varphi _e(r,\theta ,\varphi ),$$
(13)
where the integral is over the volume of cell $`i`$, and define $`N_{l,\mathrm{exp},i}`$ similarly. Then, given a probability distribution $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ characterized by a set of parameters $`\alpha `$, I define the likelihood for that cell as

$$L_iP(N_{e,i},N_{l,i}|\alpha ),$$
(14)
where the quantitity on the right-hand side is determined by Equation (3). I have implicitly assumed that all sets of $`\alpha `$ have equal Bayesian prior probability. I then minimize the quantity

$$2\underset{i}{}\mathrm{ln}L_i$$
(15)
by varying the parameters $`\alpha `$ in order to find the best fit.

In practice, it is time-consuming to fit simultaneously for the parameters of both $`f(\delta _e)`$ and $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$ in Equation (1). Thus, I first fit for the parameters of the density distribution $`f(\delta _e)`$; I do so with an equation analogous to Equation (14), using the probability $`P(N_e|\alpha )`$ given in Equation (4) in place of $`P(N_e,N_l|\alpha )`$. Then I fix the parameters of $`f(\delta _e)`$ and use Equation (14) to fit separately for those of $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$. Experiments show that the difference between this approach and fitting for all the parameters simultaneously is negligible compared to the error bars.

Once one has found the maximum likelihood fit to the parameters, one would like to calculate the errors associated with them. I use three methods of calculating error bars. First, I perform Monte Carlo bootstrap estimates of the errors. Second, I again make a Monte Carlo estimate, only now creating realizations based on the model to which I have fit. (This procedure also serves to show that the method is unbiased). Third, I simply look at the likelihood contour $`_{\mathrm{min}}+1`$ in order to estimate the 1$`\sigma `$ error contour, which it is in the limit that $``$ is a paraboloid. All of these methods agree within 10–20%, and the listed error bars in this paper are those determined by bootstrap. (For a comparison of the likelihood method and the bootstrap method, look at Figure 6 in Section 5).

I would also like to compare different models using likelihood ratio tests. For instance, one may want to fit a model with parameters $`(\alpha _1,\alpha _2)`$ and ask whether this model is significantly better than fitting a model with the single parameter $`(\alpha _1)`$. In this case, one calculates the “likelihood ratio” between the models,

$$l=_{\mathrm{min}}(\alpha _1)_{\mathrm{min}}(\alpha _1,\alpha _2).$$
(16)
To evaluate the significance of this likelihood ratio, I create a large number of Monte Carlo realizations based on the single-parameter model and ask how often one sees a likelihood ratio as large as the measured $`l`$ purely by accident. I will make extensive use of this technique below.

A general concern about using a counts-in-cells analysis in a flux-limited survey (e.g., TB99, Efstathiou et al. 1990) is that the measured density distribution in the cells may be affected by the variation of the selection function over their extent. As a simple example, consider a cluster sitting at the near edge of one cell, and another, identical cluster sitting at the far edge of an identical cell. In each case, the true $`\delta _e`$ is the same, as is $`N_{e,\mathrm{exp},i}`$, but $`N_e`$ will be systematically smaller in the second cell, where the cluster is more distant. Given the peculiar geometry of the cells one is forced to construct in the LCRS, variation of the selection function in the angular direction also can contribute to this effect. Thus, power on scales smaller than that of the cell can contribute to the variance in the counts-in-cells. Correcting for these effects properly evidently requires assumptions about the clustering on scales smaller than a cell. In Section 6, I will show that this problem is not significant for this analysis by considering mock catalogs of the LCRS.

### 4.2 Models for the Probability Distribution Function

In this subsection I describe models for the density distribution function $`f(\delta _e)`$; in the next two subsections, I will describe the models for the conditional probability $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$, which contains the information on the “bias relation” between the two groups of galaxies. For a review of the many different ways to model the density distribution function $`f(\delta _e)`$, see Strauss & Willick (1995). I have tried just three: a Gaussian model, a first-order Edgeworth expansition, and a log-normal model. My main results do not depend on which choice I pick, so here I will only present results for the log-normal model, which provides the best fit and which is the most mathematically convenient. It can be written:

$$f(\delta _e)d\delta _e=\frac{d\delta _e}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma _e(1+\delta _e)}\mathrm{exp}\left[x_e^2/2\sigma _e^2\right].$$
(17)
where $`x_e=\mathrm{ln}(1+\delta _e)+\sigma _e^2/2`$. Blanton (1999) gives more details on various fits to the density distribution function using this data.

### 4.3 Deterministic Bias Models

Here I describe models for the relationship between early- and late-type density fields with no scatter. “Deterministic” is not meant to refer to underlying physical principles but is simply meant to express the fact that knowing the density of ellipticals tells you with certainty the density of spirals, modulo Poisson noise. In this case, the joint density distribution can be expressed as

$$f(\delta _l|\delta _e)=\delta ^D(\delta _lb(\delta _e))$$
(18)
where $`f(\delta _e)`$ is the density distribution function of early-type galaxies and $`\delta ^D(x)`$ is the Dirac delta function. Under this assumption, one can describe the models by the biasing function $`b(\delta _e)`$.

The simplest model for $`b(\delta _e)`$ is linear bias:

$$b(\delta _e)=b_0+b_1\delta _e.$$
(19)
The obvious problem with this model is that if $`b_1>0`$, $`b(\delta _e)`$ can become less than $`1`$. In this case, I simply set $`b(\delta _e)=0`$. Another way of handling the problem is to use power-law bias:

$$b(\delta _e)=b_0(1+\delta _e)^{b_1}1,$$
(20)
which always remains greater than $`1`$. It turns out, as I will show below, that the power-law bias is in fact a poorer fit to the data than linear bias in this analysis of the LCRS.

At the cost of an extra parameter, the linear bias case can be extended trivially to quadratic bias:

$$b(\delta _e)=b_0+b_1\delta _e+b_2\delta _e^2.$$
(21)
Another possibility I try is “broken” bias, which is piecewise linear with one slope in overdense regions and another in underdense regions:

$$b(\delta _e)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}b_0+b_1\delta _e& \mathrm{for}& \delta _e<0\\ b_0+b_2\delta _e& \mathrm{for}& \delta _e>0\end{array}$$
(22)
For each model, I require that $`\delta _l=0`$, because it is meant to represent the overdensity of late-type galaxies. In practice, this requirement sets $`b_0`$, which is therefore not treated as a free parameter in any of the above expressions.

### 4.4 Stochastic Bias Models

If variables other than the local density field are important in determining where galaxies form, it may be that the different formation processes of early-type and late-type galaxies cause scatter in the relationship between their density fields. Thus, I also examine other models which do incorporate scatter, rewriting Equation (18) by replacing the Dirac delta-function with a Gaussian of finite width:

$$f(\delta _l|\delta _e)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma _b}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(\delta _lb(\delta _e))^2}{2\sigma _b^2}\right]$$
(23)
where $`b(\delta _e)`$ and $`f(\delta _e)`$ are chosen as above. $`\sigma _b`$ parameterizes the degree of scatter in the relationship. Note that because of the lower limit $`\delta _l1`$, $`\delta _l|\delta _eb(\delta _e)`$ in general, although the differences will not be important for my purposes. I do shift the peak of the Gaussian slightly to guarantee that $`\delta _l=0`$. In the case that $`f(\delta _e)`$ is Gaussian, and $`\sigma `$ and $`\sigma _b`$ are small, $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ reduces to a bivariate Gaussian distribution, and the standard correlation coefficient is related to $`\sigma _b`$ by

$$r=\sqrt{1(\sigma _b/\sigma _l)^2}$$
(24)
Below, I will use Equation (23) to fit linear bias with Gaussian scatter to the relationship between galaxy types.

## 5 Results from the LCRS

In this section, I determine the selection function of the LCRS, fit for the density distribution function, and fit for the bias. I then investigate important systematic effects in the results which indicate that the stochasticity measured from the full set of cells described in Section 2 may overestimate the true stochasticity.

### 5.1 Selection Function and Expected Counts

I first fit for the luminosity function for the early- and late-type galaxies, in each MOS field type (112-fiber or 50-fiber) and Galactic hemisphere (north or south), denoting therefore each field as N112, S112, N50, or S50. I limit the redshifts of the galaxies I consider to the range where the counts-in-cells analysis will take place, from 5,000 km/s to 50,000 km/s; this limitation minimizes uncertainties due to possible systematic effects associated with identifying higher redshift galaxies ($`>50,000`$ km/s). For details on these fits, see Blanton (1999).

Figure 3 shows as the solid histogram the expected distribution of galaxies with redshift, assuming $`\delta =0`$, for all four types of fields and for both early- and late-type galaxies. The actual distribution of galaxies is shown as the dotted line. Note that the two distributions follow each other reasonably well. The alert eye will be suspicious of the apparent underdensity of actual late-type galaxies relative to the expected late-type galaxies at low redshifts in N112 and S112, where an large apparent overdensity exists for the early-type galaxies. In addition, there are somewhat fewer than expected early-type galaxies at high redshift. These features turn out to be important, and I discuss below their ramifications.

### 5.2 Fitting the Bias Function

The first task is to fit for $`f(\delta _e)`$ and $`f(\delta _l)`$, using the method of fitting for the probability distribution function described in Section 4. The results of fits to a log-normal distribution are shown in Table 1. It is already clear from the results in this table that the early-type galaxies are more clustered than the late-type galaxies by about 20–30%.

With the parameters of the $`f(\delta _e)`$ distribution in hand, I now fit for the bias relation $`f(\delta _l|\delta _e)`$. I try all of the models described in Section 4, as listed in the top section of Table 1. For the linear fit I find $`b_1=0.76\pm 0.02`$; that is, the late-type galaxies are underbiased with respect to the early-type galaxies, to a degree which agrees with the conventional wisdom. The power-law fit is worse than the linear fit, and I will not consider it further. Some nonlinearity is detected in the quadratic bias case, at rather high significance (6$`\sigma `$; although read below for words of caution in interpretation), in the sense that the slope of the bias steepens at large densities. The broken bias model also shows this effect, at somewhat lower significance. Stochasticity is detected at about 10$`\sigma `$ significance, with $`\sigma _b=0.21\pm 0.02`$. Contours showing the model distributions of $`P(N_e,N_l)`$ superposed on the data are shown in Figure 4 for the linear, quadratic, broken, and stochastic models. Notice that the quadratic and broken models curve upward relative to the linear model to fit the data better, while the stochastic model has fattened contours because of the scatter it adds to the relation.

One can investigate the difference between these contour plots a bit more quantitatively. I do so by finding a set of contours of the model probability which contain an increasing fraction of the model cells, from $`0`$ to $`1`$. I can compare this fraction to the fraction of actual cells which are contained in each contour. The difference between the fraction of model cells to the fraction of actual cells is plotted for each model in Figure 5. It is clear that the model which follows the probability contours most closely is the stochastic model. A refinement of this analysis would be to compare each cell to the model $`f(\delta _e,\delta _l)`$ convolved with the Poisson noise of that cell alone, and to calculate a two-dimensional statistic analogous to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Lupton 1993).

The likelihood functions for each type of fit are shown in Figure 6. This plot shows that bootstrap gives errors comparable to those calculated from the likelihood function. The likelihoods relative to the linear fit are also shown in Table 1, and indicate that the stochastic linear bias is clearly the best model I have considered. I have compared each of the two-parameter fits to the linear fit by using a likelihood ratio test, whose results I show in the last column as the probability $`P_{\mathrm{linear}}`$ of getting the observed likelihood difference if the true bias relation were linear. Note that since I only ran 200 realizations for each estimate, there is a lower limit on $`P_{\mathrm{linear}}`$ of 0.005. From these results, it is clear that I detect nonlinearity at a statistically significant level, and stochasticity at an extremely significant level.

Are stochasticity and nonlinearity both present? To address this question, rather than fitting a nonlinear and stochastic model, which would be complicated and would introduce an extra parameter, I instead ask: is the detected nonlinearity consistent with what one would find if the stochastic, linear model was correct? For example, in a realization of the stochastic, linear model, it can happen that the few high-density cells happen to all scatter below the mean $`\delta _l=b\delta _e`$. In this case, a nonlinear fit will have a higher likelihood than a linear fit; it will not, on the other hand, be correct. Can the degree of improvement of the nonlinear fits over the linear fits be simply attributed to this effect? I test this by looking at the likelihood ratio between the quadratic fit and the linear fit in a set of Monte Carlo realizations of the stochastic bias model. This experiment shows that the likelihood ratio is on average $`_{\mathrm{linear}}_{\mathrm{quad}}11\pm 9`$. That is, if there is in reality some scatter around linear bias, the data always is better fit by the deterministic quadratic model than by the deterministic linear model, and the measured quadratic parameters are meaningless. In fact, since the measured likelihood ratios between the nonlinear and linear fits are in this range, I cannot truly claim to have measured nonlinearity here.

While these likelihood ratio tests reveal the relative quality of the fits, one can evaluate the absolute quality by looking at the likelihood distribution of fits to a set of Monte Carlo realizations of each model, and calculating the probability $`P_{\mathrm{random}}`$ of getting a lower best-fit $``$ for the model; if this probability is near unity, then the data do not fit the model as well as they should according to the realizations, whereas if it is less than $`0.5`$ the model fits the data as well as could be expected. This method is not ideal, but it gives a rough calibration of whether the fit is decent. From the top section of Table 1, it appears that the only model that does a reasonable job of fitting the full set of cells is the stochastic model.

The level of stochasticity detected here corresponds to $`r0.87`$; for comparison, the moments method of TB99 would estimate $`r`$ for this counts-in-cells distribution to be $`r=0.73\pm 0.01`$. Apparently a considerable amount of the “stochasticity” measured by the moments method is due to an inadequate characterization of the distribution of the densities, most likely because the method does not account for the non-Gaussianity of the Poisson distribution at low $`N`$ or for the lower limit on the overdensity fields of $`1`$. On the other hand, as discovered in the next section, even this small level of measured stochasticity may be fictitious, due to systematic errors in the selection function.

### 5.3 Testing for Systematic Errors

In order to probe the susceptibility of these results to systematic errors, I have run a battery of tests. First, I briefly list a number of tests which made no significant difference in my main results. Second, I describe the effects of the central magnitude cut. Finally, in the next subsection, I show that there is a redshift-dependence of the results.

A number of tests have very little effect on the results concerning stochasticity. For instamce, whether or not $`\delta _e`$ or $`\delta _l`$ is used as the independent variable has no effect on the results. In addition, identical results are found in the Northern and Southern Galactic hemispheres. Furthermore, there is no dependence of the stochastic fit on changes in: the form of the density distribution function used, the $`K`$-correction applied, the completeness correction applied, or the cell configuration used. (The nonlinear fits do depend somewhat on cell configuration, but I argued above that the nonlinear fits in this case were probably meaningless). A more complete discussion of these issues can be found in Blanton (1999).

A suspicious element of the selection of galaxies in the LCRS which I address here is the central magnitude cut. Because aperture magnitudes of fixed angular size exclude a varying fraction of galaxy light depending on redshift, the central magnitude defined by the LCRS is actually a redshift dependent quantity. The sense is that at low redshift, less of the total galaxy flux is contained within a central angular radius, and thus $`m_c`$ is likely to be higher. Thus, this cut will preferentially exclude low-redshift galaxies. An aperture magnitude with a diameter of 3–4′′, as used in the LCRS, depends much more strongly on redshift for an exponential profile (characteristic of late-type galaxies) than a de Vaucouleurs profile (characteristic of early-type galaxies) in the redshift range under consideration here. It is therefore conceivable that late-type galaxies are being preferentially excluded at low redshifts, causing an apparent low density relative to the densities of early-type galaxies in that regime.

However, the situation appears not to be that simple, as I show by performing the following experiment. Instead of using the central magnitude limit $`m_{c,\mathrm{cut}}`$ (as defined in Equation 5) used by the survey, which excludes 12% of the galaxies, I enforce a somewhat more stringent limit in $`m_c`$ (by about 0.2 magnitudes) which excludes about 24% of the galaxies. If the effect descibed in the previous paragraph is important, one would expect the estimated galaxy density field to change significantly. However, it does not. To understand why, consider Figure 7. The top panel in each column shows the ratio of the number of galaxies per unit redshift in the stringent sample to the number in the full sample, for the N112 fields, $`N_{\mathrm{stringent}}(z)/N_{\mathrm{full}}(z)`$, for each galaxy type. Clearly, as described in the previous paragraph, the late-type galaxies at low redshift are preferentially excluded. However, as shown in the middle panel, the selection function for the stringent sample (shown as the dotted line) also changes relative to the full sample (shown as the solid line). This happens because the average number of faint galaxies relative to bright galaxies is underestimated for the stringent sample. Since faint galaxies are not observable at large distances, this change does not affect the selection function at large redshifts. Indeed, as the bottom panel shows, the ratio $`N(z)/N_{\mathrm{exp}}(z)`$ for the stringent sample is almost identical to that of the full sample. Correspondingly, the results of the density distribution and bias fits are unchanged as well. Thus, the effect of the central magnitude cut seems not to be crucial.

### 5.4 Redshift Dependent Selection Effects

In order to demonstrate the redshift-dependence of the results, I cut the two innermost rings of cells out of the sample, and fit to the rest, as shown in the bottom section of Table 1. This set of cells shows no nonlinearity, and a much reduced stochasticity. The contours showing the model $`P(N_e,N_l)`$ superposed over the data for this set of cells are shown in Figure 8. Again, I compare the model to actual fraction of cells within each contour in Figure 9, finding this time no apparent difference between any of the models. I can again express the stochasticity in terms of the correlation coefficient $`r0.95`$; the moments method of TB99 obtains $`r=0.93\pm 0.03`$ for this set of cells. This result indicates that most of the signal for stochastic bias was coming from the two innermost rings of cells.

This dominance of the inner two rings cannot be ascribed to the higher signal-to-noise ratio of these cells. To demonstrate this fact, I perform Monte Carlo realizations using all the cells except the two inner rings, but using the parameters for linear stochastic bias determined using all of the cells (i.e., using the parameters in the top section of Table 1). I find that the maximum likelihood fit detects $`\sigma _b0.2`$ (the correct value for the tests) with a likelihood difference with respect to the linear fit between $`40`$ and $`80`$, not $`8`$ as for the real data. Nor does the redshift dependence appear to be a result of luminosity-dependent bias (in the sense that fainter galaxies, observable only at low redshift, have a different relative bias between galaxy types). I show this by performing the analysis again, using only galaxies brighter than $`M=19.3`$, the faintest galaxy luminosity observable at 24,000 km/s; I found little change in the results.

In order to understand the effect better, consider Figure 10. This figure shows the distribution of $`N_e/N_{e,\mathrm{exp}}`$ and $`N_l/N_{l,\mathrm{exp}}`$ among the cells. I have marked the cells in the inner two rings with square boxes and the other cells as crosses. It is clear that the nearby cells have a different distribution than the rest of the cells. What this indicates is that the selection function is either overestimated for late-type galaxies or underestimated for early-type galaxies at low redshifts, which is plausible on consideration of Figure 3. I have performed the same analysis using selection functions based on the luminosity functions of Bromley et al. (1998) and find the same effect.

In Figure 11, I show the luminosity function of the galaxies in the N112 sample again, this time fitting separately to the high-redshift portion ($`cz>24,000`$ km/s) and the low-redshift portion ($`cz<24,000`$ km/s). Clearly, there are significantly fewer early-type galaxies detected at high redshift than at low redshift. Given the relatively shallow depth of the survey, it is not likely that that this difference is due to evolution of the population of early-type galaxies. Thus, the large apparent overdensity of early-types in the low-redshift region (see Figure 3) might exist only because the normalization is underestimated due to early-type galaxies being missed at high redshifts. In this case, the observed stochasticity could be due simply to fluctuations in the apparent overdensity field caused by errors in the selection function. I test this by fitting for the bias in all cells, but determining the expected counts using the low-redshift luminosity function for the inner two rings of cells, and the high-redshift luminosity function in the rest of the cells. The results are listed in the second section of Table 1. The linear fit is basically unchanged. The nonlinear fits change dramatically, though as I showed above, such changes should not be too surprising. Finally, the stochasticity is reduced significantly, to $`0.16\pm 0.02`$. Remembering that $`\sigma _b`$ adds quadratically, this result indicates that a large proportion of the scatter was indeed simply due to the redshift dependence. Figure 12 shows the joint counts-in-cells that these fits were based on, showing (as in Figure 10) the low redshift cells separately from the high redshift cells. One can see clearly that the estimated early-type densities of the low redshift cells are quite different from those in Figure 10, and that the distribution of low redshift cells now appears consistent with the distribution of the rests of the cells.

The question remains where this redshift dependence comes from. I have already shown that the central magnitude selection criterion does not affect the results; in any case, one would expect it to preferentially exclude late-type galaxies at low redshift, since late-types are more extended than early-types. Similarly, the use of isophotal magnitudes, which depend on redshift due to $`(1+z)^4`$ surface-brightness dimming, would also preferentially exclude late-type galaxies. In addition, I show below using mock catalogs that the use of isophotal magnitudes does not affect the results. Another possibility is that the spectral classification scheme is misclassifying galaxies. However, in the case of misclassification, one would expect to see comparable errors in the normalization of both galaxy types, not just the early-types. A final, speculative possibility is that early-type galaxies at high redshift tended not to be be identified as galaxies in the survey in the first place, since they are compact enough to look like stars. I am currently looking at the redshift distribution of galaxies and issues of galaxy selection using the superior imaging and spectroscopic data of the SDSS (Gunn & Weinberg 1995), and it is possible that this work will lend understanding to the problems faced in the LCRS.

Until the nature of the galaxy selection in this survey is more fully understood, I recommend taking most seriously the results in the bottom section of Table 1, which exclude the two innermost rings, and indicate a bias which is linear, with perhaps some mild scatter, and an amplitude of $`b_10.8`$.

## 6 Results from Mock Catalogs

Because of the peculiar geometry and selection effects of the LCRS, it is necessary to test this method against mock catalogs where I have simulated all of the properties of the survey. I would also like to test whether some of the systematic trends with redshift found in the last section can be explained by selection effects in the survey.

### 6.1 Simulations

For current purposes I run particle-mesh simulations of a 300 $`h^1`$ Mpc box using $`256^3`$ particles and $`512^3`$ grid cells, using a code provided by Renyue Cen. I use the flat CDM model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.4`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.6`$; the angular diameter distances and the distance moduli for the mock catalogs are calculated using this model, although the analysis of the mock surveys are performed using the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ model for the redshift-distance relation, as they are for the real survey. To select the late-type galaxies, I simply pick dark matter particles at random. To select the early-type galaxies, I smooth the density field with a 3 $`h^1`$ Mpc Gaussian filter, and apply a threshhold of $`\delta _c=0.25`$, at $`z=0`$; every dark matter particle above the threshold has an equal probability of becoming an early-type galaxy. Mock catalogs are drawn from three realizations of this model. Note that since the box size is smaller than the redshift limits of the survey, I must extend the box periodically in each direction in order to simulate the LCRS.

As a benchmark against which to compare the mock catalogs, I take the simulation and divide it into cubic cells 25 $`h^1`$ Mpc on a side. I subsample the galaxies such that there are about 20–30 galaxies of each type in each cell. I refer to this sample as the benchmark catalog. It is free of all of the selection effects associated with the real survey, as well as redshift-space distortions. The cells are equivalent in volume to the cells described in Section 2. I have listed in the top section of Table 2 the results of fitting the bias for all such cells for all three realizations simultaneously. I will evaluate the degree to which the selection effects affect my results by comparing realistic mock catalogs to the results for these benchmark cells.

To create realistic mock catalogs, I pick a random particle in the simulation to represent the observer. In order to evaluate the effects of the cell shapes independent of other selection effects, I create a catalog using the angular and redshift limits of all of the cells, without regard to flux limits. I refer to this catalog as a volume-limited catalog. For this catalog, I do implement redshift-space distortions, although these do not make a significant difference in the results. Again, I subsample the galaxies such that there are approximately 20–30 galaxies of each type in each cell.

To create flux-limited catalogs, I assign each galaxy an absolute magnitude randomly from the luminosity function determined in Section 5 for N112 galaxies, depending on which type of galaxy it is. I then “observe” the galaxies in the simulation box, using the angular and photometric limits of the LCRS (Shectman et al. 1996). For most of the catalogs, I assume the observers have the ability to measure total magnitudes, and apply only the apparent magnitude limits, not the central magnitude limits. I explore below the effects of using isophotal magnitudes and implementing the central magnitude limits. I create two types of flux-limited mock catalogs: first, fully-sampled catalogs, in which I take the redshift of every galaxy within the flux-limits of each field; second, undersampled catalogs, in which I select the targets in each field based on the number of fibers available for that field (allowing for about 5% of the fibers to be accidentally placed on stars). Furthermore, for the undersampled catalogs, there is a probability of failing to observe the galaxy which is a function of its magnitude, given by $`f_g(m)`$. In the real LCRS, fibers could not be placed more closely than $`55^{\prime \prime }`$; I implement that restriction in the undersampled catalogs as well. Finally, in accordance with the stated photometric errors in Shectman et al. (1996), I included 1$`\sigma `$ magnitude errors of $`0.1`$ for $`m<17`$ and $`0.17`$ for $`m>17`$, as well as 1$`\sigma `$ redshift errors of $`67`$ km/s.

In order to determine the effects of cosmic scatter and to test whether the survey constitutes a fair sample, I draw thirty undersampled mock catalogs from three realizations. After fitting for the bias in each catalog, I compared the standard deviation of the results to the estimated errors. They were almost identical, indicating that the errors due to cosmic scatter are no bigger than the other statistical errors.

### 6.2 Analysis of the Mock Catalogs

The results of these mock catalogs are listed in Table 2. First, I compare the benchmark catalog, which consists of all three realizations divided into cubical cells, to the volume-limited catalog, which uses cells of the same shape used in the actual survey. The benchmark catalog has much smaller error bars because it probes considerably more volume than the other catalogs. The fluctuation amplitudes $`\sigma _l`$ and $`\sigma _e`$ measured for the volume-limited catalog are significantly smaller than for the benchmark catalog, indicating that the cell shapes in the LCRS probe effectively larger scales than cubes of equivalent volume. However, the bias fits change very little between the two catalogs. No parameter changes more than about 1.5$`\sigma `$. Note that the bias implemented here is only slightly scale-dependent, and that if it were strongly scale-dependent, the difference between the volume-limited and benchmark catalogs might be larger, because the two catalogs probe somewhat different scales.

Second, I consider the fully sampled catalog, which implements the flux-limits of the survey, but not the finite number of fibers or the fiber collision effects. The differences in all the parameters is quite small. $`\sigma _e`$ and $`\sigma _l`$ do increase slightly by about 1.5$`\sigma `$; in addition, the stochasticity in the bias $`\sigma _b`$ also increases by almost 1.5$`\sigma `$, but it remains much smaller than that measured in the data. It is possible that these increases are due to the variation of the selection function across the cells, as explained in Section 4. However, this effect is apparently too small compared to the noise to be important for the LCRS, though it may be of concern to larger surveys if they strive for more precision.

Third, the results of the undersampled catalog, which implements the effects of a finite number of fibers and fiber collisions, are again almost identical to the fully-sampled case. $`\sigma _e`$ and $`\sigma _l`$ are reduced by about $`1\sigma `$ apiece, which could just as easily be due to chance as it could be due to the sampling effects. The only large change is in $`\sigma _b`$, which does decrease rather substantially from the fully-sampled case.

Given the results in this section, I conclude that the selection function, variable flux limits, finite sampling, and fiber collisions do not affect the results significantly.

### 6.3 Isophotal and Central Magnitude Limits

The catalogs I examine above are purely flux-limited and assume observers can measure total magnitudes. However, I also want to probe the effects of using isophotal magnitudes, as well of implementing the central magnitude cut. In order to do so, I must also model the surface brightness profiles and characteristic radii of the galaxies. I adopt a very simple picture here, since I am interested not in a perfect model of the galaxy distribution but only in some estimate of how adding these realistic observational effects changes one’s estimate of the galaxy density field. I model the early-type galaxies as pure de Vaucouleurs profiles:

$$I(R)\mathrm{exp}\left\{7.67\left[\left(R/R_{\mathrm{deV}}\right)^{1/4}1\right]\right\},$$
(25)
where $`R`$ is the distance from the center of the galaxy and $`R_{\mathrm{deV}}`$ is a characteristic scale length. I model the late-type galaxies as bulge components with de Vaucouleurs profiles, which characteristic scale $`R_{\mathrm{bulge}}`$, plus disk components with exponential profiles:

$$I(R)\mathrm{exp}\left[R/R_{\mathrm{disk}}\right],$$
(26)
where again $`R_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ is a characteristic scale length. For these galaxies I fix $`R_{\mathrm{bulge}}/R_{\mathrm{disk}}=0.6`$ and $`B/T=0.4`$ (see Binney & Merrifield 1998 for the definition of $`B/T`$), which are appropriate choices for Sbc galaxies (Kent 1985). In order to determine the scale lengths, I follow Sodré & Lahav (1993) and write:

$$\mathrm{log}_{10}\left[R/R_0\right]=A(M+20)+ϵ(\sigma _R).$$
(27)
where $`ϵ(\sigma _R)`$ represents Gaussian noise with a standard deviation $`\sigma _R`$. In accordance with semi-analytic models I set $`A=0.13`$ (Dalcanton, Spergel, & Summers 1997). Furthermore, I choose $`\sigma _{R,\mathrm{deV}}=0.13`$, $`\sigma _{R,\mathrm{disk}}=0.3`$, $`R_{\mathrm{disk},0}=2`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc, and $`R_{\mathrm{deV},0}=3`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. These parameters are not unique; they simply produce a distribution of $`m`$ and $`m_c`$ which is reasonably like the data. I tried several variations on these parameters as well, with no significant change in the results. The profile of each galaxy is scaled to the appropriate redshift and convolved with the seeing, which for simplicity I assume to be Gaussian with a FWHM of $`1.8^{\prime \prime }`$. Using a Gaussian seeing profile is somewhat unrealistic; it will make very little difference to the central magnitude, but it might cause the difference between the isophotal and total magnitudes to be underestimated at large redshifts. As a further simplification, I assume all galaxies are face-on and axisymmetric. This assumption exaggerates the difference between isophotal and total magnitudes.

To determine the isophotal magnitude, $`m_{\mathrm{iso}}`$, I use a limiting isophote of about 23 mag/arcsec2, corresponding approximately to 15% of the sky brightness in $`R`$, which are the stated isophotal limits of Shectman et al. (1996). The total flux within this isophote is used to calculate the apparent magnitude of the galaxy in the sample. To determine the central magnitude, I take a circular aperture of diameter $`3.5^{\prime \prime }`$. I add central magnitude errors with a dispersion of $`0.17`$, similar to the stated errors in the photometry of faint galaxies in the survey. I then apply the same flux and central magnitude cuts on the mock survey as to the real data.

I produce three mock catalogs to test these observational effects, all taken from the same vantage point in the same realization, so I can compare their density fields directly. First, I produce a mock catalog in which the observers have been able to measure the total magnitudes of the galaxies. Second, I produce one which is flux-limited, but based on isophotal magnitudes as described above. Third, I produce one which uses isophotal magnitudes and is also $`m_c`$-limited; that is, the central magnitude cuts have been applied. I can compare these different catalogs by looking at $`N(z)`$ as well as $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}(z)`$ for each, as determined by fitting for the luminosity function and calculating the selection function; I make this comparison in Figure 13, which is analogous to Figure 7 for the observations. Using isophotal magnitudes evidently causes the systematic elimination of galaxies at high redshifts, where $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming and the effects of seeing start to become important. Meanwhile, as I showed for the real observations in Figure 7, the $`m_c`$ cut elimates galaxies at low redshift. However, the changes to the luminosity function caused by these eliminations seems to cause the selection functions to be reasonable estimates of the probability of observing a galaxy at all redshifts. The bottom panels of Figure 13 show, correspondingly, that the density fields of galaxies are thus unaffected by these changes in galaxy selection. I perform the counts-in-cells analysis on these galaxies, and as shown in Table 3, these observational effects do not appear to be able to cause the sort of stochasticity observed in the real sample.

## 7 Summmary and Conclusions

I have presented a straightforward maximum likelihood method to determine the relationship between the density fields of different galaxies types on a point-by-point basis by looking at the joint counts-in-cells distribution $`P(N_e,N_l)`$. Using mock catalogs, I have demonstrated the reliability of the method. I have applied the method to the LCRS in an attempt to constrain the nature of the segregation of different galaxy spectral types (as classified by Bromley et al. 1998). At most a small amount of stochasticity affects the relationship between early- and late-type galaxies in the LCRS, corresponding to $`r0.87`$, a larger correlation coefficient than found using the simple moments method of TB99. In addition, it is likely that even this result is low because of poorly understood selection effects in the survey, and that the true value of $`r`$ is closer to $`0.95`$.

In either case, the large scatter predicted by Blanton et al. (1999) from hydrodynamic simuations does not seem to exist, and the results are more consistent with the semi-analytic predictions of Somerville et al. (1999). It is not clear yet what the implications of this result are, but there are at least three possibilities. First, because the survey is selected in the $`R`$ band and is surface-brightness limited, there may not be a sufficient range of galaxy types represented to reveal the predicted stochasticity. The fact that the relative bias $`b`$ between early- and late-type galaxies is also smaller than predicted (1.2 instead of 1.5) is consistent with this explanation. Second, since the simulations of Blanton et al. (1999) are low resolution and cannot resolve galactic disks, it may be that the simulations are not modelling important effects on subgrid scales which would considerably reduce the stochasticity. Third and most interesting (though probably least likely), is the possibility that the fundamental principles behind the way galaxy formation is approximated in the simulations are flawed, and need to be revised. Improved simulations and the analysis of new, larger, and more complete redshift surveys such as the SDSS will help answer these questions.

In addition to the main result, I have found suspicious behavior of the selection function derived for the sample (both my own and that of Bromley et al. 1998). A thorough investigation of possible causes of these errors, using the data itself as well as mock catalogs, has turned up no likely cause of this effect, including surface-brightness selection effects, the use of isophotal magnitudes, and errors in the $`K`$-correction. On the other hand, it is possible that some of the mock catalog experiments presented here are misleading because the model I used for galaxy profiles was inadequate (for instance, if I used an inaccurate distribution of galaxy sizes). Analysis of larger surveys with better quality images and spectra, such as the SDSS, may thus be more useful than the mock catalogs in understanding the effect. I must note that the distinct, though unlikely, possibility remains that the low redshift portion of the LCRS is indeed an unusual section of the universe, either due to a rapid evolution of galaxy properties between $`z0.2`$ and today or because of some peculiar local phenomenon.

The inadequacy of the selection function may have consequences for other results based on the LCRS. First, I have shown here that the low correlation coefficients measured by TB99 may be in doubt. Second, the excess large-scale power in this survey claimed by Landy et al. (1996) may be due to this effect. In fact, the largest amplitude wave in the survey that those authors detect is in the “outward,” redshift direction, which might indicate that redshift dependent selection effects could be contaminating their results; on the other hand, they also detect large waves tangent to the redshift direction, which might not be so readily explained.

In any case, the method presented here is applicable to any comparison of counts-in-cells of different galaxy populations. It may be most useful in surveys which are volume-limited and have simpler geometries. Such surveys would also make it easier to explore the scale-dependence of the relative bias of galaxies; this task is difficult in the LCRS, since looking at larger scales forces one to change the geometry of one’s cells, which as I have shown affects the results. In particular, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; Gunn & Weinberg 1995) and the Two-Degree Field (2DF; Colless 1998) would allow one to make powerful tests of the nature of morphological segregation. It is possible, of course, to compare the galaxy densities in different surveys using this method (Seaborne et al. 1999). For example, one might use the future $`K`$-selected redshift survey based on the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; Beichman et al. 1998) to compare in the appropriate volume to the SDSS or 2dF.

In conclusion, the details of morphological segregation contain much information about how galaxies formed. This paper has attempted to extract some of this information by measuring the stochasticity in the relative clustering of galaxy types. Future redshift surveys and more sophisticated galaxy formation models will be able to make much more powerful and informative tests.

Thanks to Michael Strauss for advice on this work as well as comments on the text. I am indebted to Benjamin Bromley, Marc Davis, Daniel Koranyi, Huan Lin, Max Tegmark, and Douglas Tucker for extensive advice and for access to source code. In addition, I thank Jeremiah Ostriker, James Gunn, David Spergel, Roman Juszkiewicz, Robert Lupton, Jim Annis, and Uros Seljak for useful discussions. Michael Way, Stephane Ethier, and Ryan Scranton did a great job of maintaining the computer systems on which this work was performed. I am grateful for the hospitality of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who kindly provided computing facilities on my frequent visits there. Finally, this work would not have been possible without the public availability of the Las Campanas Redshift Survey data, for which I thank the LCRS team. This work was supported in part by the grants NAG5-2759, AST93-18185 and AST96-16901, the Princeton University Research Board, the DOE, and the NASA grant NAG 5-7092 at Fermilab.

## Appendix A Maximum Likelihood Calculation of the Luminosity Function

The goal of this section is to describe how to maximize the condition probability:

$$p(L_j|z_j)=\frac{p(L_j,z_j)}{p(z_j)}=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_j)f_g(m_j)}{_{L_{\mathrm{min},j}}^{L_{\mathrm{max},j}}𝑑L\mathrm{\Phi }(L)f_g(m)},$$
(A1)
in terms of a model for the luminosity function $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$, using the method described by Efstathiou, Ellis, & Peterson (1988).

Any interpolation scheme used to approximate the factors in Equation (A1) can be expressed as:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}{}}}\mathrm{\Phi }_iW(L,i),\mathrm{and}`$ (A2)
$`{\displaystyle _{L_{\mathrm{min}}}^{L_{\mathrm{max}}}}𝑑L\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}{}}}\mathrm{\Phi }_i\left[H(L_{\mathrm{min}},i)H(L_{\mathrm{max}},i)\right].`$ (A3)
Here $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i`$ refers to the luminosity function determined in bin $`i`$, bounded by $`L_i`$ and $`L_{i+1}`$. In the case of piecewise constant interpolation, which is sufficient for my purposes,

$`W(L,i)`$ $`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{cc}1& \mathrm{if}L_i<L<L_{i+1},\mathrm{and}\hfill \\ 0& \mathrm{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}`$ (A6)
$`H(L,i)`$ $`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{cc}0& \mathrm{if}L_{i+1}<L\\ L_{i+1}L& \mathrm{if}L_i<LL_{i+1}\\ L_{i+1}L_i& \mathrm{if}L<L_i\end{array}`$ (A10)
The formulae for piecewise linear interpolation are given by Koranyi & Strauss (1997). Using these approximations, multiplying the conditional probabilities given by Equation (A1) for each galaxy $`j`$ in the survey, and imposing the maximum likelihood condition that

$$\frac{}{\mathrm{\Phi }_k}\frac{}{\mathrm{\Phi }_k}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{gals}}}{}}\mathrm{ln}\left[p(L_j|z_j)\right]=0$$
(A11)
for all of the $`N_{\mathrm{step}}`$ parameters, yields an iterative equation for each $`\mathrm{\Phi }_k`$:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_k=\frac{_{j=1}^{N_{\mathrm{gals}}}\left[W(L_j,k)\mathrm{\Phi }_kf_g(m_k)/_{i=1}^{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}\mathrm{\Phi }_if_g(m_i)W(L_j,i)\right]}{_{j=1}^{N_{\mathrm{gals}}}\left[\left(H(L_{\mathrm{min},j},k)H(L_{\mathrm{max},j},k)\right)f_g(m_k)/_{i=1}^{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}\mathrm{\Phi }_if_g(m_i)\left(H(L_{\mathrm{min},j},i)H(L_{\mathrm{max},j},i)\right)\right]},$$
(A12)
which reduces to Equation (2.12) of Efstathiou, Ellis, & Peterson (1988) in the case of piecewise constant interpolation, which I will use here. Note that for the case of piecewise linear interpolation, this formula differs from the one given by Koranyi & Strauss (1997), which is missing terms in the denominator of the numerator. Experiments have shown that the difference between using this formula and theirs is fairly small.

As described in Efstathiou, Ellis, & Peterson (1988), the luminosity function is derived by starting with some initial guess for the $`\mathrm{\Phi }_k`$ and iterating until the improvement in the likelihood per iteration is small. Throughout, one maintains the normalization condition:

$$g\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}{}}\mathrm{\Phi }_i(L_{i+1}L_i)1=0.$$
(A13)
The errors in $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_k`$ can be calculated by inverting the matrix:

$$I_{ij}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}\frac{^2\mathrm{ln}}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_i\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_j}\frac{g}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_i}\frac{g}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_j}& \frac{g}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_i}\\ \frac{g}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }_j}& 0\end{array}\right]$$
(A14)
The diagonal elements of $`I_{ij}^1`$ are the errors in each parameter $`\mathrm{\Phi }_k`$, while the off-diagonal elements represent the covariances.

This procedure has determined the shape of the luminosity function, but one has yet to determine its amplitude. To do so one must calculate the selection function, which with the interpolation scheme can be approximated by

$$\varphi (z)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{steps}}}{}}\mathrm{\Phi }_if_g(m_i)f_t\left(H(L_{\mathrm{min}},i)H(L_{\mathrm{max}},i)\right).$$
(A15)
The most straightforward estimate of the normalization of the luminosity function (though not the minimum variance estimator) is

$$n_1=\frac{1}{V}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{gals}}}{}}\frac{1}{\varphi _j},$$
(A16)
where $`V`$ is the size of the volume probed, and the error can be estimated as

$$\delta n_1^2^{1/2}=\frac{1}{V}\left[\underset{j=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{gals}}}{}}\frac{1}{\varphi _j^2}\right]^{1/2}$$
(A17)
Given $`n_1`$, one can express the number of galaxies per unit volume per unit luminosity by $`n_1\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$.


format: text

text:
# Neutralino pair production at proton-proton collider 11footnote 1The project supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China

Abstract

In this paper we investigated the Drell-Yan process of the light neutralino pair $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0(i,j=1,2)`$ productions at hadron colliders. We studied the dependence of the coupling properties of two light neutralino $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ on the three SUSY Lagrangian parameters $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$, and find that the production rate of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair will be dominated by the Higgsino-like couplings under the condition $`\mu M_2`$ and $`\mu M_1`$, while the productions of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pairs will be enhanced by the gaugino-like couplings under $`M_i\mu `$. For the Higgsino-like $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ neutralinos, the cross section of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ production at the LHC can reach $`100fb`$.

PACS number(s): 14.80.Ly, 12.60.Jv

1. Introduction

With various theoretically appealings, the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is considered as the most potential choice for new physics beyond the Standard Model(SM). However, due to the absence of supersymmetric particle discovery in the energy range of current colliders, the supersymmetry (SUSY) is clearly not an exact symmetry of nature, and therefore must be broken. If R-parity conservation is hold and the SUSY breaking is around TeV scale, the first two neutralinos $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are expected to be light, and the lightest one $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ is probably the lightest supersymmetric particle(LSP) in the SUSY models. Neutralinos would be the most promising particles for the first experimental SUSY test. Due to the high luminosity and large energy, the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) has the ability to produce neutralino pairs $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$. In proton-proton collisions, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ pairs can be produced via Drell-Yan subprocess and gluon-gluon fusion. Although the anti-quark luminosity in distribution function of proton is much lower than gluon, yet the cross sections of the neutralino pair productions via Drell-Yan mechanism are competitive with those from the gluon-gluon fusion, since the former mechanism of neutralino pair productions are accessible at the tree level. These facts make the production rates in Drell-Yan process are competitive with or even larger than those in gluon-gluon fusions. Therefore, it is significant in theoretical and experimental studies of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ pair productions via $`q\overline{q}`$ collisions at LHC.

There are four SUSY model parameters involved in chargino/neutralino(ino) sector, i.e. gaugino mass parameter $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$, Higgs mass parameter $`\mu `$ and the ratio of vacuum expectation values(VEV) $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =v_2/v_1`$. These four parameters are essential ingredients of the model: the two gaugino mass terms quantify the supersymmetry soft breaking of $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ subgroup, and together with $`\mu `$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ determine all the phenomenology properties in the ino sector. In order to extract the ino physical quantities (i.e. masses, mixings and couplings) from experimental observables (such as cross sections, branching ratios and L-R asymmetries), one needs to study thoroughly the relations of these quantities and observables with the fundamental SUSY parameters. The discussion of the pair productions of neutral gaugino and Higgsino current eigenstates can be found in Ref.. However, the discussions were not based on physical neutralino particles, and thus could not really provide the sufficient information for the investigation of SUSY particles. In this work, we studied three typical pair production processes of neutralino mass eigenstates in proton-proton collisions, and investigated the dependence of their cross sections on SUSY Lagrangian parameters. The paper is organized as follows: in the section below, we present some general discussions on the diagonalization of ino mass matrixes. Sec. III gives the analytical tree-level formula of the cross sections of subprocesses $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$. In Sec.IV, we study the production rates of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ pairs in both the subprocesses and the parent processes, and discuss the dependence of the production rates on the SUSY model parameters. Finally, a brief summary is presented.

2. The MSSM parameters in chargino/neutralino sector

The charginos $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^+(j=1,2)`$ mass matrix in the current eigenstate basis has the form

$$X=\left(\begin{array}{cc}M_2& \sqrt{2}\mathrm{sin}\beta m_W\\ \sqrt{2}\mathrm{cos}\beta m_W& \left|\mu \right|e^{i\varphi _\mu }\end{array}\right)$$
$`\left(2.1a\right)`$
and the neutralino $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0(i=1,4)`$ mass matrix is

$$Y=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}M_1e^{i\varphi _1}& 0& m_Z\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{cos}\beta & m_Z\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\beta \\ 0& M_2& m_Z\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{cos}\beta & m_Z\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\beta \\ m_Z\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{cos}\beta & m_Z\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{cos}\beta & 0& \left|\mu \right|e^{i\varphi _\mu }\\ m_Z\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\beta & m_Z\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\beta & \left|\mu \right|e^{i\varphi _\mu }& 0\end{array}\right).$$
$`\left(2.1b\right)`$
Without loss of any generality, $`\mu `$ and $`M_1`$ can be complex which can introduce CP-violation, and $`M_2`$ would be set to real and positive for its phase angle can be rotated away by the field redefinition and thus absorbed into $`\varphi _\mu `$ and $`\varphi _1`$. The diagonalizations of matrix $`X`$ and $`Y`$, which give all the ino masses and their couplings, can be achieved with

$$U^{}XV^{}=X_D$$

$$N^{}YN^{}=Y_D$$
$`\left(2.2\right)`$
In this work, we consider the ino sector with the following assumptions:

* For simplification, CP-conservation is hold, namely $`\varphi _\mu =\varphi _1=0`$.
* The physical signs among $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ are relative, which can be absorbed into phases $`\varphi _\mu `$ and $`\varphi _1`$ by redefinition of fields. Thus, $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ are chosen to be real and positive, i.e., $`M_1,M_2,\mu >0`$.
* $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is always set as an input parameter, supposed that adequate information about $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ could be obtained from some other experiments beyond ino sector.

With the above assumptions, generally we have two ways to choose the input parameters in our calculation. One can employ the scenario of taking $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$, $`\mu `$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ as input parameters, and then get all the physical ino masses and the matrix elements of $`U`$, $`V`$ and $`N`$ as outputs. The detail analyses can be found in Ref. . Since the Lagrangian parameters should be extracted from the physical quantities, one can also choose an alternative way to diagonalize the mass matrix $`Y`$ by taking any three physical ino masses together with $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ as inputs. This strategy will provide the other three ino masses and all the mixings and couplings as outputs. There are several scenarios about the choices of three ino masses. On the consideration that adequate information from chargino sector will give out the two mass values of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^+`$, and from the energy distribution of the final particles in the decay of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^+`$ at least one mass value of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}`$ can be measured, in this paper we take two chargino masses $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^+}`$ and one of the neutralino masses $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}`$ as inputs. In this way, the two fundamental SUSY parameter $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ can be figured out from the chargino masses by using following formula

$$(M_2,\mu )=M_\pm =\frac{1}{2}\left(\sqrt{\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^+}+m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^+}\right)^22m_W^2\left(1\mathrm{sin}2\beta \right)}\pm \sqrt{\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^+}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^+}\right)^22m_W^2\left(1+\mathrm{sin}2\beta \right)}\right).$$
$`\left(2.3\right)`$
The ambiguity in determining $`\mu `$ and $`M_2`$ from the two-fold values of $`M_\pm `$ can be cleaned up with some favourable measurements on the chargino phenomenology. Practically, if the behaviours of charginos and their couplings are Higgsino-like, there exists $`M_2\mu `$, while if they are gaugino-like, we have $`M_2\mu `$. As to $`M_1`$, it is usually a free parameter in the MSSM, if we have no further assumption. In the second input strategy, $`M_1`$ can be determined by one of neutralino masses $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}`$ alone, when $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ are given by Eq.(2.3).

$`M_1`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}^2\mu ^2)(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}M_2)\pm 2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}^2m_Z^22m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}M_2m_Z^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W+`$
$`\mu (2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}M_2)m_Z^2\mathrm{sin}2\beta \pm \mu M_2m_Z^2\mathrm{sin}2\beta \mathrm{cos}2\theta _W\}/`$
$`\left\{\left(\mu ^2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}^2\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}M_2\right)+m_Z^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _W\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}\pm \mu \mathrm{sin}2\beta \right)\right\}`$
$`\left(2.4\right)`$
Generally there are two solutions for $`M_1`$, and one is positive while the other is negative. With the assumptions mentioned above, we take the positive value solution from Eq.(2.4), and fix $`M_1`$ definitely. Therefore, from the input mass values of two charginos ($`m_{\chi _{1,2}^+}`$) and one of the neutralino mass($`m_{\chi _i^0}`$), one can extract all the SUSY mass parameters $`M_1`$ and $`M_\pm `$ which denote $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ alternatively, and then figure out the mass spectra and all the couplings of neutralino sector consequently. In the following calculation and discussion, we will adopt both input strategies discussed above.

3. Neutralino pair productions in $`q\overline{q}`$ collisions

The Neutralino pair productions processes via the collisions of quark and anti-quark in protons, can be expressed as

$$q\left(p_1\right)\overline{q}\left(p_2\right)\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\left(k_1\right)\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0\left(k_2\right)(i,j=1,2,3,4)$$
$`\left(3.2\right)`$
where $`p_1`$ and $`p_2`$ represent the momenta of the incoming quark and anti-quark, and $`k_1`$ and $`k_2`$ denote the momenta of the two final state neutralinos, respectively. The Mandelstam variables $`\widehat{s}`$, $`\widehat{t}`$ and $`\widehat{u}`$ are defined as $`\widehat{s}=(k_1+k_2)^2`$, $`\widehat{t}=(p_1k_1)^2`$, $`\widehat{u}=(p_1k_2)^2`$. The relevant Feynmann diagrams are drawn in Fig.1. The interaction Lagrangians involved are listed as

$$_{Zq\overline{q}}=\frac{g}{\mathrm{cos}\theta _W}\overline{q}\gamma ^\mu \left[a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^LP_L\right]qZ_\mu $$

$$_{Z\chi ^0\chi ^0}=\frac{g}{2\mathrm{cos}\theta _W}\overline{\chi }_i^0\gamma ^\mu \left[O_Z^{ij}P_LO_Z^{ij}P_R\right]\chi _j^0Z_\mu $$

$$_{q\stackrel{~}{q}\chi ^0}=\sqrt{2}g\overline{q}\left[a_{qki}^LP_L+a_{qki}^RP_R\right]\chi _i^0\stackrel{~}{q}_k$$
$`\left(3.1a\right)`$
with the coupling constants

$$a_{Zq}^S=Q_q\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W,a_{Zq}^L=\frac{1}{2}\left(1\right)^{T_q^3+1/2}$$

$$O_Z^{ij}=N_{i,4}N_{j,4}^{}N_{i,3}N_{j,3}^{}$$

$$a_{qki}^L=\frac{m_qN_{i,5q}^{}}{2m_W\beta _q}R_{qk,1}^{}\mathrm{tan}\theta _WQ_qN_{i,1}^{}R_{qk,2}^{}$$

$$a_{qki}^R=\left(T_q^3N_{i,2}\mathrm{tan}\theta _W\left(T_q^3Q_q\right)N_{i,1}\right)R_{qk,1}^{}+\frac{m_qN_{i,5q}}{2m_W\beta _q}R_{qk,2}^{}$$
$`\left(3.1b\right)`$
Here $`P_{R,L}=(1\pm \gamma _5)/2`$. $`R_q`$ denote the squark transformation matrix. $`q=1,2`$ denote up-type and down-type quarks respectively, and

$$\beta _q=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{sin}\beta & q=1\\ \mathrm{cos}\beta & q=2\end{array}$$
$`\left(3.1c\right)`$
The corresponding Lorentz invariant matrix element for the tree-level process is written as

$$_0=_{\widehat{s}}+_{\widehat{t}}+_{\widehat{u}}$$
$`\left(3.3a\right)`$
where

$$_{\widehat{s}}=\frac{ig^2}{2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _W\left(\widehat{s}m_Z^2\right)}\overline{u}\left(k_1\right)\gamma ^\mu \left[O_Z^{ij}P_LO_Z^{ij}P_R\right]v\left(k_2\right)\overline{v}\left(p_2\right)\gamma _\mu \left[a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^LP_L\right]u\left(p_1\right)$$

$$_{\widehat{t}}=\frac{2ig^2}{\widehat{t}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_k}^2}\overline{u}\left(k_1\right)\left(a_{qki}^LP_R+a_{qki}^RP_L\right)u\left(p_1\right)\overline{v}\left(p_2\right)\left(a_{qkj}^LP_L+a_{qkj}^RP_R\right)v\left(k_2\right)\left(k=1,2\right)$$

$$_{\widehat{u}}=\left(1\right)^{\delta _{ij}}\frac{2ig^2}{\widehat{u}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_l}^2}\overline{u}\left(k_2\right)\left(a_{qlj}^LP_R+a_{qlj}^RP_L\right)u\left(p_1\right)\overline{v}\left(p_2\right)\left(a_{qli}^LP_L+a_{qli}^RP_R\right)v\left(k_1\right)\left(l=1,2\right)$$
$`\left(3.3b\right)`$
Here we take simply vanished masses of the first generation quarks, i.e. $`m_u=m_d=0`$. The relative sign $`(1)^{\delta _{ij}}`$ of $`_{\widehat{u}}`$ towards $`_{\widehat{t}}`$ and $`_{\widehat{s}}`$ is merely due to Pauli statistics.

The corresponding differential cross section at tree level can be written as

$$\frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{1}{4}\frac{N_c}{9}\left(\frac{1}{2}\right)^{\delta _{ij}}\frac{g^4\lambda _{ij}}{32\pi ^2\widehat{s}^2}\left(I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{s}}+I_{\widehat{t}\widehat{t}}+I_{\widehat{u}\widehat{u}}+2I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{t}}+2\left(1\right)^{\delta _{ij}}I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{u}}+2\left(1\right)^{\delta _{ij}}I_{\widehat{t}\widehat{u}}\right)$$
$`\left(3.4a\right)`$
where the factors $`\frac{1}{4}`$, $`\frac{N_c}{9}`$ and $`(\frac{1}{2})^{\delta _{ij}}`$ are the initial spin-average, color-average and final identical-particle factors respectively. The squares of matrix element have the form as

$`I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{s}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{cos}^4\theta _W\left(\widehat{s}m_Z^2\right)^2}}\left(a_{Zq}^{S2}+a_{Zq}^Sa_{Zq}^L+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_{Zq}^{L2}\right)`$
$`\left[O_Z^{ij}O_Z^{ij}\left(\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{t}\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{t}\right)+\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{u}\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{u}\right)\right)\left(O_Z^{ij2}+O_Z^{ij2}\right)m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}\widehat{s}\right]`$
$`I_{\widehat{t}\widehat{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\left(\widehat{t}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_k}^2\right)\left(\widehat{t}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_k^{}}^2\right)}}\left(a_{qk^{}i}^La_{qki}^L+a_{qk^{}i}^Ra_{qki}^R\right)\left(a_{qkj}^La_{qk^{}j}^L+a_{qkj}^Ra_{qk^{}j}^R\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{t}\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{t}\right)`$
$`I_{\widehat{u}\widehat{u}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\left(\widehat{u}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_l}^2\right)\left(\widehat{u}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_l^{}}^2\right)}}\left(a_{ql^{}j}^La_{qlj}^L+a_{ql^{}j}^Ra_{qlj}^R\right)\left(a_{qli}^La_{ql^{}i}^L+a_{qli}^Ra_{ql^{}i}^R\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{u}\right)\left(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{u}\right)`$
$`I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _W\left(\widehat{s}m_Z^2\right)\left(\widehat{t}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_k}^2\right)}}`$
$`[(a_{Zq}^Sa_{qki}^La_{qkj}^LO_Z^{ij}(a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^L)a_{qki}^Ra_{qkj}^RO_Z^{ij})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{t})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{t})+`$
$`((a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^L)a_{qki}^Ra_{qkj}^RO_Z^{ij}a_{Zq}^Sa_{qki}^La_{qkj}^LO_Z^{ij})m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}\widehat{s}]`$
$`I_{\widehat{s}\widehat{u}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _W\left(\widehat{s}m_Z^2\right)\left(\widehat{u}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_l}^2\right)}}`$
$`[((a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^L)a_{qlj}^Ra_{qli}^RO_Z^{ij}a_{Zq}^Sa_{qlj}^La_{qli}^LO_Z^{ij})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{u})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{u})+`$
$`(a_{Zq}^Sa_{qlj}^La_{qli}^LO_Z^{ij}(a_{Zq}^S+a_{Zq}^L)a_{qlj}^Ra_{qli}^RO_Z^{ij})m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}\widehat{s}]`$
$`I_{\widehat{t}\widehat{u}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\left(\widehat{t}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_k}^2\right)\left(\widehat{u}m_{\stackrel{~}{q}_l}^2\right)}}`$
$`[(a_{qli}^La_{qkj}^La_{qki}^La_{qlj}^L+a_{qli}^Ra_{qkj}^Ra_{qki}^Ra_{qlj}^R)m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}\widehat{s}+`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(a_{qli}^La_{qkj}^La_{qki}^Ra_{qlj}^R+a_{qli}^Ra_{qkj}^Ra_{qki}^La_{qlj}^L)`$
$`((m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{t})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{t})+(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2\widehat{u})(m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\widehat{u})(\widehat{s}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2)\widehat{s})]`$
$`\left(3.4b\right)`$
where

$$\lambda _{ij}=\sqrt{\left(\widehat{s}m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2\right)^24m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i}^2m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j}^2}/2$$

4. Numerical results and discussion

As we assume $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are lighter than $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3,4}^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ is likely to be the LSP, the three types of channels: $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$, $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ and $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ (associated production) would be the most dominant neutralino pair production processes which may lead to the first detection of SUSY particles at the LHC. Here we present the numerical results of the cross sections of these three processes and discuss their dependences on the basic SUSY parameters. We divide the input MSSM parameters into two parts. One is for for the general parameters included also in the SM, and the other is the ino and squark sectors of the MSSM. For the first parameter part, we take $`m_Z=91.1887GeV`$, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W=0.2315`$, $`\alpha =1/137.03598`$. For the second part, we just limit the values of $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ to be real, positive and below $`1TeV`$, and take $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =1.5`$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{u}_1}=m_{\stackrel{~}{d}_1}=350GeV`$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{u}_2}=m_{\stackrel{~}{d}_2}=550GeV`$, and $`\theta _{\stackrel{~}{u}}=\theta _{\stackrel{~}{d}}=\pi /4`$. The three ino physical masses are taken as

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^+}=150GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^+}=550GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0}=100GeV,$$
$`\left(4.1a\right)`$
By using Eq.(2.3) with above ino mass values, one may have two choices of parameter sets for $`\mu `$ and $`M_2`$, which are in two extreme cases respectively, namely Higgsino-like and gaugino-like ino states. For the Higgsino-like case, we get

$$M_2=534GeV,\mu =166GeV,M_1=135GeV,$$

and other neutralino masses as

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0}=166GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_3^0}=184GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_4^0}=550GeV.$$
$`\left(4.1b\right)`$
For the gaugino-like case, we have

$$M_2=166GeV,\mu =534GeV,M_1=105GeV,$$

and other three neutralino masses as

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0}=151GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_3^0}=534GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_4^0}=554GeV.$$
$`\left(4.1c\right)`$
For complete discussion, we present also the results for the mixture case. We take the physical mass inputs as follows for the mixture ino states

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^+}=122GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^+}=280GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0}=101GeV.$$

the corresponding outputs obtained as

$$M_2=\mu =200GeV,M_1=150GeV,$$

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0}=164GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_3^0}=201GeV,m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_4^0}=286GeV,$$
$`\left(4.1d\right)`$
Then the cross sections of the subprocesses $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ can be numerically evaluated. The cross sections for the three subprocesses are plotted in Fig.2(a),(b) and (c) respectively, as the functions of the parton-parton collision c.m.s. energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. In Fig.2(a) and (c), all the curves for gaugino-like case show obviously the threshold effects when $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$ is just above the threshold energies of the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production, respectively. The cross sections for Higgsino-like case are fairly smaller than the corresponding ones for gaugino-like case in the process of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0`$ pair production, and the curves for the Higgsino-like $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production are even too small to be plotted in Fig.2(c). On the contrary, the Higgsino couplings will enhance abruptly the cross sections for the processes of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production as shown in Fig.2(b), but the cross sections for gaugino-like and mixture cases are negligibly small compared with those for Higgsino-like case.

The reactions of $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ are only subprocesses of the parent $`pp`$ hadron collider. The total cross sections of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ pair productions via $`q\overline{q}`$ annihilation in $`pp`$ collider can be simply obtained by folding the cross sections of the subprocesses $`\widehat{\sigma }[q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0](q=u,d)`$ with the quark and anti-quark luminosity. Adopting quark and anti-quark structure functions of the MRS set G given in Ref. and $`Q=\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$, we calculate the cross sections $`\sigma [ppq\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0](i,j=1,2)`$ as the functions of the $`pp`$ collider c.m.s energy $`\sqrt{s}`$, under the same conditions of Eq.(4.1). The results are depicted in Fig.2(d). It is impressive that the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production rate at the LHC, can even reach as large as $`1.5\times 10^2fb`$, when the couplings are Higgsino-like. We also calculate the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production at the Tevatron. The cross section $`\sigma [p\overline{p}q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0]`$ can be $`0.02pb`$ in Higgsino-like case, when $`\sqrt{s}=2TeV`$. We see that the light neutralino pair production rates at the Tevatron are far smaller than those at the LHC, due to the lower c.m.s energy at Tevatron.

In Fig.3(a),(b) and (c), the cross sections $`\widehat{\sigma }[u\overline{u}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0]`$ versus the parameter $`M_2`$, with $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=1TeV`$ and $`\mu =400GeV`$, are plotted by taking $`M_1=100,400GeV`$ and $`1TeV`$, respectively. As discussed above with the physical masses $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^+}`$ and one of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0}`$, one might get three model parameters $`M_1`$ and $`M_\pm `$ where $`M_\pm `$ denote $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ alternatively. The properties of neutralinos depend not only on $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$ as charginos do, but also on the mass parameter $`M_1`$. From Fig.3, we can say in the case that when there is a large split between $`M_\pm `$ $`(M_+M_{})`$, the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ pair productions via $`q\overline{q}`$ collisions have some interesting features as follows:

* When $`M_1M_\pm `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are mainly decide by $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$: if $`\mu =M_{}M_2=M_+`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are dominantly composed of Higgsino, and consequently $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production rate is significant while $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\left(i=1,2\right)`$ pair productions are suppressed; if $`\mu =M_{}M_2=M_+`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ is approximately $`\stackrel{~}{W}_3`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ is Higgsino, and accordingly $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ pair production is enhanced while $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair productions are suppressed. Shown as in Fig.3 with the cases of $`M_1=1TeV`$, and the curve of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production for the case $`M_1=1TeV`$ is too small to be plotted in Fig.3(c).
* When $`M_1M_\pm `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ is $`\stackrel{~}{B}`$. Accordingly, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair productions are dominated by gaugino-couplings, and the former is enhance and the latter is suppressed (the exceptation for the curve of $`M_1=100GeV`$ in Fig.3(b) are merely because of the mass degeneration between $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0}`$ when $`M_1=M_2=100GeV`$). $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ are decide by $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$: if $`M_2=M_{}\mu =M_+`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ is mainly $`\stackrel{~}{W}_3`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production is enhanced; and vice versa. Shown as in Fig.3 with the cases of $`M_1=100GeV`$.
* When $`M_{}{}_{}{}^{<}M_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}M_{+}^{}`$, the effects of $`M_1`$ on $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are rather weak, and only lead to some mixture. Then if $`\mu =M_{}M_2=M_+`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{1,2}^0`$ are in some Higgsino-like states, and consequently $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production is significant while $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0`$ (i=1,2) pairs are suppressed; if $`M_2=M_{}\mu =M_+`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ is in gaugino-like state while $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ may be in some mixture state, and accordingly $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ pair production is enhanced while $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pairs are suppressed. Shown as in Fig.3 with the cases of $`M_1=400GeV`$.

These features can be concluded as that pure gaugino-couplings dominate the production of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0`$ pair (as shown by the curves in the areas $`M_2<\mu =400GeV`$ of Fig.3(a,c)), while pure Higgsino couplings enhance the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0(ij)`$ pair productions (as shown by the curve of $`M_1=1TeV`$ in the area $`\mu M_2`$ of Fig.3(b)), and any gaugino-like $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ will spoil the large production rate of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$.

5. Conclusions

In this work we studied the productions of the light neutralino pairs $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ via Drell-Yan process at hadron colliders, and investigated the correlations between the property of the neutralino pair productions and the basic SUSY Lagrangian parameter $`M_1`$, $`M_2`$ and $`\mu `$.

From the numerical results, it can be concluded that Higgsino-couplings will increase the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production significantly, while gaugino-couplings enhance the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair productions. If $`\mu <<M_2`$ and $`\mu {}_{}{}^{<}M_{1}^{}`$, Higgsino components will be dominated in $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$, and the cross section of Higgsino-like $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ pair production at the LHC, can reach $`100fb`$. Thus, by taking a annual luminosity of $`pp`$ collision at the LHC being $`100fb^1`$, one can accumulate $`1\times 10^4`$ events per year. Therefore the precise measurement of this process is suitable in detecting SUSY signals and helpful in determining the basic SUSY parameters.

Acknowledgement: These work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(project numbers: 19675033, 19875049), the Youth Science Foundation of the University of Science and Technology of China and a grant from the State Commission of Science and Technology of China.

Figure Captions

Fig.1 The Feynman diagrams of the subprocess $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$.

Fig.2(a) The cross sections of the subprocess $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ as functions of $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. The letter ’u’ and ’d’ denote the different processes with initial $`u\overline{u}`$ and $`d\overline{d}`$ collisions respectively, while ’H’, ’g’ and ’m’ denote the Higgsino-like, gaugino-like and mixture cases respectively.

Fig.2(b) The cross sections of the subprocess $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ as functions of $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. The letter ’u’ and ’d’ denote the different processes with initial $`u\overline{u}`$ and $`d\overline{d}`$ collisions respectively, while ’H’, ’g’ and ’m’ denote the Higgsino-like, gaugino-like and mixture cases respectively.

Fig.2(c) The cross sections of the subprocess $`q\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ as functions of $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. The letter ’u’ and ’d’ denote the different processes with initial $`u\overline{u}`$ and $`d\overline{d}`$ collisions respectively, while ’H’, ’g’ and ’m’ denote the Higgsino-like, gaugino-like and mixture cases respectively.

Fig.2(d) The total cross sections of the process $`ppq\overline{q}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_j^0`$ as functions of $`\sqrt{s}`$, where ’H’, ’g’ and ’m’ denote the Higgsino-like, gaugino-like and mixture cases, respectively.

Fig.3(a) The cross sections of the subprocess $`u\overline{u}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ as functions of $`M_2`$ with $`\mu =400GeV`$ and $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=1TeV`$.

Fig.3(b) The cross sections of the subprocess $`u\overline{u}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ as functions of $`M_2`$ with $`\mu =400GeV`$ and $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=1TeV`$.

Fig.3(c) The cross sections of the subprocess $`u\overline{u}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$ as functions of $`M_2`$ with $`\mu =400GeV`$ and $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=1TeV`$.