THE 2dF REDSHIFT SURVEY. I. PHYSICAL ASSOCIATION AND PERIODICITY IN QUASAR FAMILIES

We have tested for physical association of candidate companion quasars with putative parent galaxies by virtue of Karlsson periodicity in quasar redshifts. We examined galaxies from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and quasars from the 2dF Quasar Redshift Survey (2QZ) in the two declination strips (at declinations 0° and –30°) covered by the 2QZ, first filtering out galaxies and quasars using the respective survey masks and observation qualities as described, and using only quasars with z ≥ 0.5 to avoid the redshift region of mixed galaxies and quasars. Around each galaxy, quasars are detected as physically associated with a putative parent galaxy if their respective redshifts conform to empirically derived constraints based on an ejection hypothesis. We ran Monte Carlo control trials against the pure physical associations by replacing the actual redshifts of the candidate companion quasars with quasar redshifts drawn randomly from each respective right ascension hour. The constraints are grouping of quasar redshifts and Karlsson periodicity of quasar redshifts.