Aj. Stirling et Ja. Peacock, POWER CORRELATIONS IN COSMOLOGY - LIMITS ON PRIMORDIAL NON-GAUSSIAN DENSITY FIELDS, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 283(4), 1996, pp. 99-104
We probe the statistical nature of the primordial density field by mea
suring correlations between the power in adjacent Fourier modes. For c
ertain types of non-Gaussian field, these k-space correlations would b
e expected to be more extended than for a Gaussian field, providing a
useful discriminatory test for Gaussian fields. We apply this test to
the combined QDOT and 1.2-Jy IRAS galaxy survey and find the observed
density field to be in good agreement with having Gaussian density flu
ctuations for modes with k less than or similar to 0.1 h Mpc(-1). From
this result we are able to set quantitative limits on a class of poss
ible non-Gaussian distributions - the product of a Gaussian field with
an independent stochastic field. The maximum sensitivity is to modula
tions of a Gaussian field with coherence scales of similar to 30 h(-1)
Mpc, and the rms modulation on this scale cannot greatly exceed unity
. We discuss the improvements to this limit likely to be set by future
surveys.