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# The peculiar motions of early-type galaxies in two distant regions – VII. Peculiar velocities and bulk motions

## 1 INTRODUCTION

This paper reports the main results of the EFAR project, which has measured the peculiar motions of clusters of galaxies in two large volumes at distances between 6000 and 15000 km s-1. The project was initiated in the wake of early studies of peculiar motions which found large-scale coherent flows over significant volumes of the local universe (Dressler et al. 1987, Lynden-Bell et al. 1988). The primary goal of the EFAR project was to test whether such large coherent motions were to be found outside the local volume within 6000 km s-1. In the following years, the velocity field within 6000 km s-1 has been mapped by several methods and in increasing detail so that today there is fair agreement on the main features of the motions (recent results are given in Giovanelli et al. 1998a,b, Dekel et al. 1999, Courteau et al. 2000, Riess 2000, da Costa et al. 2000, Wegner et al. 2000 and Tonry et al. 2000; see also the review by Dekel 2000). The bulk velocity within this volume, and its convergence towards the frame of reference defined by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), appear to be consistent with the broad range of currently-acceptable cosmological models (Dekel 2000, Hudson et al. 2000).

However on larger scales there have been measurements of bulk motions which, at face value, appear much greater than any acceptable model would predict. The first of these was the measurement by Lauer & Postman (1994), using brightest cluster galaxies, of a bulk motion of $``$700 km s-1 towards $`(l,b)`$$``$(340,$`+50`$) for a complete sample of Abell clusters out to 15000 km s-1. More recently, large motions have been also be obtained for two smaller samples of clusters at similar distances, for which peculiar velocities have been measured by the more precise Fundamental Plane and Tully-Fisher estimators: Hudson et al. (1999) find a motion of 630$`\pm `$200 km s-1 towards $`(l,b)`$=(260,$``$1) for the SMAC sample of 56 clusters at a mean distance of $``$8000; Willick (1999) finds a motion of 720$`\pm `$280 km s-1 towards $`(l,b)`$=(272,$`+`$10) for the LP10K sample of 15 clusters at very similar distances. These two motions are in good agreement with each other, but are nearly orthogonal to the Lauer & Postman motion (though similar in amplitude). In contrast, the other extant study of peculiar motions on scales greater than 6000 km s-1, the SCII Tully-Fisher survey of Dale et al. (1999a), finds a bulk flow of less than 200 km s-1 for a sample 52 Abell clusters with a mean distance of $``$11000 km s-1.

At these scales the robust prediction of most cosmological models is that the bulk motion should be less than 300 km s-1 with about 95% confidence. It is therefore of great interest to determine whether there really are large coherent motions on scales of $``$10000 km s-1. The EFAR peculiar motion survey probes the velocity field in the Hercules-Corona Borealis and Perseus-Pisces-Cetus regions, which are almost diametrically opposed on the sky and lie close to the axis of the bulk motion found by Lauer & Postman. With 84 clusters in these two regions extending out to $``$15000 km s-1, the EFAR sample is well-suited to testing for this particular bulk motion. Conversely, however, it is not well-suited to testing for a bulk motion in the direction found for the SMAC and LP10K samples, which is almost orthogonal to the major axis of the EFAR sample. The main goal of this paper is to determine the peculiar motions of the EFAR clusters and the consistency of the bulk motion of the sample with both theory and other bulk motion measurements on similar scales.

The structure of this paper is as follows: In §2 we summarise the main features of the data presented in Papers I–IV of this series. In §3 we describe the maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm developed in Paper IV, which is used to determine the parameters of the Fundamental Plane and obtain the distances and peculiar velocities for the clusters. In §4 we derive the best-fitting Fundamental Plane and critically examine the random and systematic uncertainties in the fitted parameters. In §5 we derive the distances and peculiar velocities for the clusters, testing them for possible systematic biases and comparing them to the peculiar velocities obtained by other authors for the same clusters. In §6 we determine the bulk motion of the sample and compare it, using a variety of methods, to the results of other studies and to theoretical expectations. Our conclusions are given in §7.

We use $`H_0`$=50 km s-1 Mpc and $`q_0`$=0.5 unless otherwise specified. All redshifts and peculiar velocities are given in the CMB frame of reference.

## 2 THE EFAR SAMPLE AND DATA

Earlier papers in this series have described in detail the selection of the clusters and galaxies in the EFAR sample (Wegner et al. 1996, Paper I), the spectroscopic data (Wegner et al. 1999, Paper II; Colless et al. 1999, Paper V), the photoelectric and CCD photometry (Saglia et al. 1997a, Paper III; Colless et al. 1993) and the photometric fitting procedures (Saglia et al. 1997b, Paper IV; Saglia et al. 1993). In this section we briefly summarise the main properties of the EFAR database.

The clusters of galaxies in the EFAR sample are selected in two large, distant (i.e. non-local) volumes: Hercules-Corona Borealis (HCB, 40 clusters, including Coma) and Perseus-Pisces-Cetus (PPC, 45 clusters). These regions were chosen because they contain two of the richest supercluster complexes (excluding the Great Attractor/Shapley supercluster region) within 20000 km s-1. The clusters come from the ACO catalogue (Abell et al. 1989), the list of Jackson (1982) and from scans of Sky Survey prints by the authors. The nominal redshift range spanned by the clusters is 6000 km s-1$`<`$$`cz`$$`<`$15000 km s-1. The distribution of the EFAR clusters on the sky is shown in Figure 2 of Paper I; their distribution with respect to the major supercluster complexes is shown in Figure 3 of Paper I.

Galaxies were selected in each cluster for their apparently elliptical morphology on Sky Survey prints, and for large apparent diameter. The total sample includes 736 early-type galaxies in the 85 clusters. Apparent diameters were measured visually for all early-type galaxies in the cluster fields. The range in apparent visual diameter ($`D_W`$) is from about 10 arcsec to over 60 arcsec. The sample selection function is defined in terms of these visual diameters; in total, $`D_W`$ was measured for 2185 early-type galaxies in the cluster fields. Selection functions are determined separately for each cluster, and are approximated by error functions in $`\mathrm{log}D_W`$. The mean value of the visual diameter is $`\mathrm{log}D_W`$=1.3 (i.e. 20 arcsec), and the dispersion in $`\mathrm{log}D_W`$ is 0.3 dex (see Paper I).

We obtained 1319 spectra for 714 of the galaxies in our sample, measuring redshifts, velocity dispersions and the Mg$`b`$ and Mg2 Lick linestrength indices (Paper II). There are one or more repeat observations for 45% of the sample. The measurements from different observing runs are calibrated to a common zeropoint or scale before being combined, yielding a total of 706 redshifts, 676 velocity dispersions, 676 Mg$`b`$ linestrengths and 582 Mg2 linestrengths. The median estimated errors in the combined measurements are $`\mathrm{\Delta }cz`$=20 km s-1, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma /\sigma `$=9.1%, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\text{Mg}b/\text{Mg}b`$=7.2% and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\text{Mg}\text{2}`$=0.015 mag. Comparison of our measurements with published datasets shows no systematic errors in the redshifts or velocity dispersions and only small zeropoint corrections to bring our linestrengths onto the standard Lick system.

We have assigned sample galaxies to our target clusters (or to fore/background clusters) by examining both the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the projected distributions on the sky (Paper II). The velocity distributions were based on EFAR and ZCAT (Huchra et al. 1992) redshifts for galaxies within 3 h$`{}_{}{}^{1}{}_{50}{}^{}`$ Mpc of the cluster centres. These samples were also used to derive mean redshifts and velocity dispersions for the clusters. The original selection was effective in choosing cluster members, with 88% of the galaxies with redshifts being members of sample clusters and only 12% lying in fore/background clusters or the field. The median number of galaxies per cluster is 6.

We obtained R-band CCD photometry for 776 galaxies (Paper III) and B and R photoelectric photometry for 352 galaxies (Colless et al. 1993). Comparison of the CCD and photoelectric photometry shows that we have achieved a common zero-point to better than 1%, and a photometric precision of better than 0.03 mag per measurement. Circularised galaxy light profiles were fitted with seeing-convolved models having both an $`R^{1/4}`$ bulge and an exponential disk (Paper IV). We find that only 14% of the galaxies in our sample are well fitted by pure $`R^{1/4}`$ bulges and only about 1% by pure exponential disks, with most of the sample requiring both components to achieve a good fit. From these fits we derive total R-band magnitudes $`m_T`$, $`D_n`$ diameters (at 20.5 mag arcsec-2), half-luminosity radii $`R_e`$, and average effective surface brightnesses $`SB_e`$, for 762 galaxies. The total R magnitudes span the range $`m_T`$=10.6–16.0 ($`m_T`$=13.85), the diameters span $`D_n`$=4.8–90 arcsec ($`D_n`$=20 arcsec), and the effective radii $`R_e`$ span 1.6–71 arcsec ($`R_e`$=6.9 arcsec). For 90% of our sample the precision of the total magnitudes and half-luminosity radii is better than 0.15 mag and 25% respectively. The errors on the combined quantity $`FP=\mathrm{log}R_e0.3SB_e`$ which enters the Fundamental Plane equation are always smaller than 0.03 dex. The visual selection diameters $`D_W`$ correlate well with the $`D_n`$ diameters (or, equivalently, with the Fundamental Plane quantity $`FP`$).

The morphological type classifications of the galaxies, based on all the information available to us, reveal that 31% of the sample objects, visually selected from photographic images to be of early type, are in fact spiral or barred galaxies. The 69% of galaxies classified as early-type can be subdivided into 8% cD galaxies, 12% E galaxies (best-fit by a pure $`R^{1/4}`$ profile), and 48% E/S0 galaxies (best-fit by a disk plus bulge model).

All the EFAR project data is available from NASA’s Astrophysical Data Centre (http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov) and the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (http//:cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr). A summary table with all the main parameters for every galaxy in the EFAR sample is available at these locations as J/MNRAS/vol/page. The contents of the summary table are described here in Table 1.

## 3 MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD GAUSSIAN METHOD

We use a maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm for fitting the FP and determining relative distances and peculiar velocities. This algorithm, which is described in detail in Paper VI, was developed in order to deal with the general deficiencies of previous approaches and with some specific problems posed by the selection effects and measurement errors in the EFAR sample. Previous methods for fitting the FP using forms of multi-linear regression have not fully dealt with the intrinsic distribution of galaxies in size, velocity dispersion and surface brightness, nor with the simultaneous presence of measurement errors with a wide range of values in all of these quantities. The maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm properly accounts for all these factors, and also handles complex selection effects in a straightforward way. The selection criteria for the EFAR sample are well-determined, and involve both the original sample selection based on galaxy size and a posteriori limits imposed on both galaxy size and velocity dispersion. A specific problem with the data is that the velocity dispersion measurements include a significant fraction of cases where the errors, though themselves well-determined, are large relative to the actual value. There is also the fact that the numbers of galaxies observed per cluster are relatively small, so a method is required which is both efficient and robust against outliers (either unusual galaxies or errors in the data). The extensive simulations carried out in Paper VI demonstrate that the maximum likelihood gaussian method is superior to any of the classical linear regression approaches, minimising both the bias and the variance of the fitted parameters, and performing well in recovering the FP parameters and peculiar velocities when presented with simulations of the EFAR dataset.

The maximum likelihood gaussian method assumes that each galaxy $`i`$ is drawn from an underlying gaussian distribution in the three-dimensional FP-space $`(r\mathrm{log}R_e,s\mathrm{log}\sigma ,uSB_e)`$. We also assume that this underlying distribution is the same for each cluster $`j`$, apart from a shift $`\delta _j`$ in the distance-dependent quantity $`r`$ resulting from the cluster’s peculiar motion. We want to determine the mean values $`(\overline{r},\overline{s},\overline{u})`$ and the variance matrix $`V`$ which characterise the galaxy distribution, along with the shifts $`\delta _j`$ due to the clusters’ peculiar velocities. We do this by maximising the likelihood of the observed galaxy data over these parameters, while properly accounting for all the various selection effects.

The probability density for the $`i`$th galaxy, in terms of $`\stackrel{}{x}_i=(r_i\overline{r}+\delta _j,s_i\overline{s},u_i\overline{u})`$, is

$$P(\stackrel{}{x}_i)=\frac{\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{}{x}_{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{T}(V+E_i)^1\stackrel{}{x}_i\right]}{(2\pi )^{3/2}|V+E_i|^{1/2}f_i}\mathrm{\Theta }(A\stackrel{}{x}_i\stackrel{}{x}_{\mathrm{cut}}),$$
(1)
where $`V`$ is the variance matrix of the underlying distribution and $`E_i`$ is the error matrix of the measured quantities. The errors are convolved with the intrinsic dispersion of the galaxy distribution to give the observed distribution of the data. The exclusion function $`\mathrm{\Theta }(\stackrel{}{y})=\theta (y)`$, where $`\theta (y)=1`$ if $`y0`$ and 0 otherwise, accounts for parts of FP-space that are inaccessible because of selection effects. For simplicity, we assume that these selection effects apply to linear combinations of the variables, described by the matrix $`A`$. The normalisation factor $`f_i`$ is such that $`P(\stackrel{}{x})d^3x=1`$, and accounts for the selection effects described the exclusion function $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$. The likelihood of the observed sample is

$$=\underset{i}{}P(\stackrel{}{x}_i)^{1/S(\stackrel{}{x}_i)},$$
(2)
where $`S(\stackrel{}{x}_i)`$ is the selection function giving the probability of selecting a galaxy with parameters $`\stackrel{}{x}_i`$. In order to correct for the selection function, each object in the sample is included in the likelihood product as if it were $`1/S(\stackrel{}{x}_i)`$ objects.

The error matrix can be computed from the estimated errors $`(\delta r_i,\delta s_i,\delta FP_i,\delta ZP_i)`$, where $`\delta FP`$ is the error in the combined quantity $`FP=r\alpha u`$ (with $`\alpha 0.3`$) and $`\delta ZP`$ is the photometric zeropoint error. In terms of these quantities, the error matrix for galaxy $`i`$ is

$$E_i=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\delta r_i^2& 0& \frac{(1+\alpha ^2)\delta r_i^2\delta FP_i^2}{\alpha (1+\alpha ^2)}\\ 0& \delta s_i^2& 0\\ \frac{(1+\alpha ^2)\delta r_i^2\delta FP_i^2}{\alpha (1+\alpha ^2)}& 0& \delta u_i^2\end{array}\right).$$
(3)
Note that $`\delta s_i`$ combines the estimated random errors in the velocity dispersion measurements and the correlated errors between galaxies introduced by the uncertainties in calibrating dispersions obtained in different observing runs to a common system (see Paper II). Likewise, $`\delta u_i`$ is given by the quadrature sum of the error on the effective surface brightness (from the fit to the galaxy’s surface brightness distribution) and the photometric zeropoint error (see Paper III).

$$\delta u_i^2=\frac{(\alpha ^21)\delta FP_i^2+(1+\alpha ^2)\delta r_i^2}{\alpha ^2(1+\alpha ^2)}+\delta ZP_i^2$$
(4)
For the EFAR sample, the selection function depends on galaxy diameter and varies from cluster to cluster (see Paper I). For galaxy $`i`$, a member of cluster $`j`$, the selection probability is

$$S_i=S(\mathrm{log}D_{Wi})=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+\mathrm{erf}\left[\frac{\mathrm{log}D_{Wi}\mathrm{log}D_{Wj}^0}{\delta _{Wj}}\right]\right).$$
(5)
The selection function for cluster $`j`$ is characterised by $`D_{Wj}^0`$, the size at which the selection probability is 0.5, and by $`\delta _{Wj}`$, the width of the cutoff in the selection function. For early-type galaxies, the visually estimated diameter $`D_{Wi}`$ correlates with the measured diameter $`D_{ni}`$ according to the relation $`\mathrm{log}D_{ni}=0.80\mathrm{log}D_{Wi}+0.26`$, with a scatter of 0.09 dex in $`\mathrm{log}D_{ni}`$ (see Paper III). Because the visual diameters given in Paper I are individually uncertain, in computing selection probabilities we actually use an estimate of $`D_{Wi}`$ obtained by inverting this relation and inserting the accurately measured value of $`D_{ni}`$.

In order to avoid biasing the FP fits and the estimated peculiar velocities, it would be desirable to sample the same part of the FP galaxy distribution in all clusters. However, because the clusters are at different redshifts, the approximately constant apparent diameter selection limit corresponds to actual diameter selection limits $`D_{Wj}^0`$ for the clusters that vary by about a factor of 2–3 (the approximate range of cluster redshifts; see Paper 1). We can limit this redshift-dependent sampling bias by excluding the smaller galaxies, which are only sampled in the nearer clusters. Guided by the simulations of Paper VI, we choose a selection limit $`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$=12.6 kpc. This choice balances the reduced bias of a higher $`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$ against the larger sample size of a lower $`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$ (95% of galaxies in the EFAR sample have $`D_{Wi}`$$``$12.6 kpc). Because of the good correlation between $`D_{Wi}`$ and the combined quantity $`FP=r0.3u`$ (see Paper III), this cut in $`D_{Wi}`$ corresponds to an approximate selection limit $`FP_{\mathrm{cut}}0.78\mathrm{log}D_{W\mathrm{cut}}6.145.28`$.

Another selection limit is due to the difficulty of measuring velocity dispersions smaller than a spectrograph’s instrumental resolution. For the spectrograph setups we used, only velocity dispersions greater than about 100 km s-1 could be reliably measured (see Paper II). We therefore impose a limit $`s_{\mathrm{cut}}`$=2, excluding galaxies with $`\sigma `$$`<`$100 km s-1. The overall exclusion function for the EFAR sample is thus $`\mathrm{\Theta }=\theta (ss_{\mathrm{cut}})\theta (FPFP_{\mathrm{cut}})`$.

The mean of the distribution, ($`\overline{r}`$, $`\overline{s}`$, $`\overline{u}`$), the variance matrix $`V`$, and the shifts $`\delta _j`$, are all determined by minimising $`\mathrm{ln}`$, which for the EFAR sample is given by

$$\mathrm{ln}=\underset{FP>FP_{\mathrm{cut}}}{\overset{s>s_{\mathrm{cut}}}{}}S_i^1\left[0.5\stackrel{}{x}_{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{T}(V+E_i)\stackrel{}{x}_i+0.5\mathrm{ln}|V+E_i|+\mathrm{ln}f_i\right]$$
(6)
(where the constant term $`1.5\mathrm{ln}(2\pi )`$ has been dropped).The normalisation $`f_i`$ is obtained by integrating the gaussian distribution over the accessible volume defined by $`s`$$`>`$$`s_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ and $`FP`$$`>`$$`FP_{\mathrm{cut}}`$. The minimisation is performed using the simplex algorithm (Press et al., 1986).

The FP is defined as the plane $`r=as+bu+c`$ that passes through ($`\overline{r}`$, $`\overline{s}`$, $`\overline{u}`$) and whose normal is the eigenvector of $`V`$ with the smallest eigenvalue. For convenience, we define the second axis of the galaxy distribution to be the unit vector within the FP that has zero coefficient for $`s`$ (in fact, this turns out to be a reasonable approximation to one of the remaining eigenvectors of $`V`$). The three unit vectors giving the axes of the galaxy distribution can then be written in terms of the FP constants as

$`\widehat{v}_1`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{r}a\widehat{s}b\widehat{u}`$
$`\widehat{v}_2`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{r}+\widehat{u}/b`$ (7)
$`\widehat{v}_3`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{r}/b(1+b^2)\widehat{s}/(ab)+\widehat{u},`$
where $`\widehat{r}`$, $`\widehat{s}`$, and $`\widehat{u}`$ are the unit vectors in the directions of the FP-space axes. The eigenvalues of $`V`$ give the dispersions $`\sigma _1`$, $`\sigma _2`$ and $`\sigma _3`$ of the galaxy distribution in the directions of the eigenvectors; the smallest eigenvalue, $`\sigma _1`$, is the intrinsic dispersion of the galaxies about the FP.

The final step of the process is to recover each cluster’s distance and peculiar velocity. The mean galaxy size, $`\overline{r}\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$, provides a standard scale which we can use to determine relative distances and peculiar velocities. The offset $`\delta _j`$ between the true mean galaxy size, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$, and the mean galaxy size observed for cluster $`j`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$$``$$`\delta _j`$, is a measure of the ratio of the true angular diameter distance of a cluster, $`D_j`$, to the angular diameter distance corresponding to its redshift, $`D(z_j)`$:

$$\frac{D_j}{D(z_j)}=\frac{\mathrm{dex}(\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e})}{\mathrm{dex}(\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}\delta _j)}=10^{\delta _j}.$$
(8)
The relation between angular diameter distance and redshift (Weinberg 1972) is given by

$$D(z)=\frac{cz}{H_0(1+z)^2}\frac{1+z+\sqrt{1+2q_0z}}{1+q_0z+\sqrt{1+2q_0z}}.$$
(9)
We assume $`H_0`$=50 km s-1 Mpc, $`q_0`$=0.5, and compute all redshifts and peculiar velocities in the CMB frame of reference. The peculiar velocity of the cluster, $`V_j`$, is then obtained as

$$V_j=\frac{cz_jcz(D_j)}{1+z(D_j)},$$
(10)
where $`z(D_j)`$ is the redshift corresponding to the true distance $`D_j`$ through the inverse of equation (9). Note that we are not using the low-redshift approximation $`V=czH_0D=cz(110^\delta )`$, which leads to small but systematic errors in the peculiar velocities (e.g., at $`cz`$=15000 km s-1, the approximation leads to a systematic peculiar velocity error of about $``$4%).

These distances and peculiar velocities are relative, because the standard scale is determined by assuming that the distance (or, equivalently, peculiar velocity) of some standard cluster (or set of clusters) is known. Distances and peculiar velocities are therefore in fact relative to the true distance and peculiar velocity of this standard.

## 4 THE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE

### 4.1 Best-fit solution and random errors

We determine the parameters of the Fundamental Plane and the cluster peculiar velocities in a two-step process. We first fit the Fundamental Plane using only those clusters with 6 or more suitable galaxies having reliable dispersions, effective radii and mean surface brightnesses (the criteria are given below). We exclude clusters with fewer members because the simulations of Paper VI show that including less well-sampled clusters increases the variance on the FP parameters. We then determine peculiar velocities for all the clusters in a second step, where we fix the FP parameters at the values determined in the first step. This procedure results in more accurate and precise peculiar velocities than a simultaneous global solution for the FP parameters and the peculiar velocities.

In order to be included in the fit a galaxy had to satisfy the following criteria: (1) good quality photometric fit (Q=1 or Q=2; see Paper III); (2) $`\sigma 100`$ km s-1 and $`\delta \mathrm{log}\sigma 0.5`$ (see Paper II); (3) a selection diameter $`D_W12.6`$ kpc and a selection probability $``$0.1. The first criterion excludes galaxies with unreliable structural and photometric parameters (see Paper III); the second excludes galaxies with dispersions less that the typical instrumental resolution or which have very large uncertainties; the third ensures that the clusters have uniform selection criteria and that no individual galaxy enters with a very high weight. No galaxy is excluded on the basis of its morphological type. There were 31 clusters in the sample with 6 or more galaxies satisfying these criteria.

As well as these a priori criteria, we also rejected a further 8 galaxies on the basis that they lie outside both the 3-$`\sigma `$ ellipse of the galaxy distribution in the $`FP`$$`\mathrm{log}\sigma `$ plane when the FP fit is obtained using all the galaxies in these 31 clusters meeting the selection criteria (including themselves), and outside the 5-$`\sigma `$ ellipse of the galaxy distribution when the FP fit is obtained excluding them. These galaxies are listed in Table 2, which gives their galaxy ID number (GIN), their cluster assignment number (CAN), their EFAR name, their morphological type and, where appropriate, their NGC/IC numbers. The reasons why these 8 galaxies are poorly fitted by the FP distribution that satisfactorily represents the other 255 galaxies fulfilling the selection criteria are not apparent. Although three are spirals, the other five include two ellipticals, two E/S0s and a cD. Three are members of A2151, including the cD NGC 6041. Two of these galaxies (GINs 45 and 370) are in clusters with data for 6 members; these two clusters (A160 and A1983) therefore drop out of the sample of clusters to which we fit the FP. Also listed in Table 2 are another 3 galaxies in clusters with fewer than 6 members that are excluded from further analysis because they lie outside the 5-$`\sigma `$ ellipse of the best-fitting galaxy distribution.

The final sample of 29 clusters used to fit the FP parameters is listed in Table 3, which gives the cluster assignment number (CAN), the cluster name, the mean heliocentric redshift and the number of galaxies that enter the FP fit. Of these 29 clusters, 12 are in HCB and 17 in PPC. They span the redshift range 6942 km s-1 (Coma) to 20400 km s-1 (A419), though most are in the range 9000–15000 km s-1. However, they have similar selection diameters $`D_W^0`$, with minimum values of the $`D_W`$ diameter in the range $`\mathrm{log}D_W`$(kpc)=1.0–1.3. The Coma cluster sample is supplemented with the data of Müller (1997; see also Müller et al. 1998, 1999), which were obtained using essentially the same methodology. Müller’s photometric data have been adjusted by adding 0.04 mag in order to bring them into agreement with the EFAR data for galaxies in common.

In fitting the FP we assume $`H_0`$=50 km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0`$=0.5. We fix the zeropoint of the FP by forcing the mean of the FP shifts of the 29 clusters to be zero—i.e. we fix $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$ by requiring $`\delta _j`$=0. This results in a peculiar velocity for Coma of only $``$29 km s-1, so our FP zeropoint is essentially identical to that obtained by setting the peculiar velocity of Coma to be zero, as is often done. The effective radii and mean surface brightnesses used were the total $`R_e`$ and $`SB_e`$ (rather than the bulge-only $`R_{eB}`$ and $`SB_{eB}`$) given in Paper III. In applying absorption corrections (taken to be $`2.6E_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}/4.0`$) we have adopted the mean of the absorption corrections derived from Burstein & Heiles (1982, 1984; BH) and Schlegel et al. (1998, SFD; with $`E_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}`$ offset by $``$0.02 mag, the mean offset from BH given by SFD). The above assumptions and cluster/galaxy selection criteria yield our best fit to the FP. This best fit is given as case 1 in Table 4, which lists the number of clusters and galaxies in the fit, the FP coefficients $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$, and the means and dispersions describing the galaxy distribution: $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}\sigma }`$, $`\overline{SB_e}`$, $`\sigma _1`$, $`\sigma _2`$ and $`\sigma _3`$. The table also explores the effects of the various assumptions and selection criteria, giving the FP fits obtained for a wide range of alternative cases.

Case 1 is our best-fit solution. The EFAR FP, based on 29 clusters and 255 galaxies, has $`a`$=1.223$`\pm `$0.087, $`b`$=0.336$`\pm `$0.013 and $`c`$=$``$8.66$`\pm `$0.33. The intrinsic scatter about this FP is $`\sigma _1`$=0.064$`\pm `$0.006, corresponding in to an intrinsic error in estimating distances of 15%111Logarithmic errors, $`ϵ`$, are converted to linear errors, $`\epsilon `$, according to $`\epsilon =(10^{+ϵ}10^ϵ)/2`$.. Figure 1a shows the projection of the galaxy distribution in the $`\mathrm{log}\sigma `$$`FP`$ plane (where $`FP=rbu`$). The hard cut in $`\mathrm{log}\sigma `$ and the approximate cut in $`FP`$ are indicated by dashed lines. The shape of the best-fitting galaxy distribution is shown by the projections of its major and minor axes and its 1, 2, 3 and 4-$`\sigma `$ contours. Figure 1b shows the scatter of $`\mathrm{log}R_e`$ about the FP predictor for $`\mathrm{log}R_e`$, namely $`a\mathrm{log}\sigma +bSB_e+c`$. The rms scatter about the 1-to-1 relation (the solid line) is 0.087 dex, which is larger than $`\sigma _1`$ because of the errors in the measurements. (Allowing for the estimated measurement errors, the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ is 1.01, which is a consistency check on the fitted value of $`\sigma _1`$.) Thus although the intrinsic rms precision of distance estimates from the FP is 0.064 dex (15%), the effective rms precision for the EFAR sample when the intrinsic scatter and the measurement errors are combined is 0.087 dex (20%).

The random errors given above for the best-fit parameters are based on 1000 simulations of the recovery of the FP from the EFAR dataset (assuming no peculiar velocities) using the maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm, as described in Paper VI. Figure 2 shows the distributions of the fitted parameters from these 1000 simulations: the dotted vertical line is the input value of the parameter and the smooth curve is the gaussian with the same mean and rms as the fits. There are residual biases in the fitted parameters, as shown by the offsets between the input parameters and the mean of the fits: $`a`$ is biased low by 6%, $`b`$ is biased low by 2%, $`c`$ is biased high by 4%; $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}\sigma }`$and $`\overline{SB_e}`$are all biased high, by 0.036 dex, 0.007 dex and 0.05 mag respectively; the scatter about the FP is under-estimated by 0.006 dex, or 1.4%. These biases are all less than or comparable to the rms width of the distribution, so that although they are statistically significant (i.e. much greater than the standard error in the mean, rms/$`\sqrt{1000}`$), they do not dominate the random error in the fitted parameters. We do not correct for these biases since they are small and have negligible impact on the derived distances and peculiar velocities (see §5 below).

### 4.2 Variant cases and systematic errors

All the other cases listed in Table 4 are variants of this standard case, as briefly described in the Notes column of Table 4. Case 2 includes galaxies with poorer quality ($`Q`$=3) photometry and less reliable structural parameters, increasing the scatter about the FP. Case 3 includes the outlier galaxies rejected from the standard sample, and also has a larger FP scatter. Cases 4–6 show that applying alternative prescriptions for the absorption corrections (BH corrections, SFD corrections without an offset, and corrections based on a 36:64 weighting of BH and SFD) has no significant effect on the FP fit. Case 7 shows that applying a stricter constraint on the errors in the velocity dispersions, excluding galaxies for which $`\delta \mathrm{log}\sigma `$$`>`$0.1, also has no effect. Cases 8–11 correspond to different cuts in $`D_W`$ (no cut and $`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$=6.3, 14.1 and 15.9 kpc respectively); there is a slight flattening of the FP slope $`a`$ for lower cuts. Case 12 excludes not only the galaxies rejected from the standard fit, but also galaxies with low likelihoods ($`\mathrm{ln}`$$`<`$0); this results in a highly biased fit, with both $`a`$ and $`b`$ significantly lower than in the standard case, and with an artificially lowered FP scatter. Case 13 shows that assuming a $`q_0`$=0 cosmology has no impact on the FP fit. Cases 14 and 15 examine the effect of a lower ($`S_i`$$`>`$0.01) and a higher ($`S_i`$$`>`$0.2) limit on the allowed selection probabilities. The former case has highly deviant values for $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}\sigma }`$ and $`\overline{SB_e}`$ due to over-weighting a few galaxies with low selection probabilities; the latter case has biased values of $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ due to ignoring the tail of the selection function. Case 16 ignores the selection probabilities altogether and applies a uniform weight to all galaxies, resulting in an effective over-weighting of the larger galaxies and biasing the mean values of $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{log}\sigma }`$ to higher values. Cases 17–20 show that setting the mean FP shift to +0.01, $``$0.01, +0.03 and $``$0.03 dex respectively (rather than to zero, as in the standard case) has no effect on the fitted FP.

Case 21 permits an extra degree of freedom by allowing the orientation of the major axis of the galaxy distribution within the FP to be fitted, rather than specified a priori. The unit vectors of the galaxy distribution for the standard case, given by equation (3), are

$`\widehat{v}_1`$ $`=`$ $`+1.000\widehat{r}1.223\widehat{s}0.336\widehat{u}`$
$`\widehat{v}_2`$ $`=`$ $`+1.000\widehat{r}+0.000\widehat{s}+2.978\widehat{u}`$ (11)
$`\widehat{v}_3`$ $`=`$ $`2.978\widehat{r}2.710\widehat{s}+1.000\widehat{u},`$
while the true eigenvectors, obtained by fitting with the extra degree of freedom, are

$`\widehat{v}_1`$ $`=`$ $`+1.000\widehat{r}1.227\widehat{s}0.337\widehat{u}`$
$`\widehat{v}_2`$ $`=`$ $`+1.000\widehat{r}0.032\widehat{s}+2.964\widehat{u}`$ (12)
$`\widehat{v}_3`$ $`=`$ $`3.176\widehat{r}2.863\widehat{s}+1.000\widehat{u}.`$
The coefficient of $`\widehat{s}`$ in the second eigenvector is small, justifying the simplifying approximation of setting it to zero used in equation (3). The FP itself is very close to the standard fit, while the axes within the FP have coefficients differing from the standard values by no more than a few percent; $`\sigma _1`$ stays the same, while $`\sigma _2`$ is maximised and $`\sigma _3`$ is minimised.

Case 22 replaces the individual error estimates for all measured quantities with uniform errors; this has little effect on the FP, but under-estimates the intrinsic scatter about the plane. Cases 23–28 explore the effects of varying the minimum number of galaxies required for a cluster to be included in the fit, from 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 up to 10. Note that this is the number of galaxies in the cluster before excluding outliers; hence case 26 differs from case 1 in having 31 clusters rather than 29. The simulations of Paper VI suggested that a spuriously small estimate for $`\sigma _1`$ could in principle result when clusters with few galaxies are included in the fit, as offsetting the FP with a spurious peculiar velocity could suppress the apparent scatter. However this effect is not observed in fitting the actual data, and the FP fits are consistent with the errors on the best fit for samples with a minimum number of galaxies per cluster of between 3 and 8. A significantly flatter FP slope is found only for the set of clusters with 10 or more galaxies, where there are only 7 clusters and 99 galaxies in the fit and correspondingly larger uncertainties. Case 29 is the same as the standard case except that spirals are excluded, so that the FP is fitted only to galaxies with E, E/S0 and cD morphological types. The FP slope for these early-type galaxies is steeper, with $`a`$=1.33. Cases 30–33 are similar to case 29, but with the minimum number of galaxies required for a cluster to be included in the fit varied from 3 to 6. Cases 34 and 35 are the same as the standard case except that the fit is restricted, respectively, to exclude cD galaxies and both cD galaxies and spirals. Removing cDs flattens $`a`$ and lowers $`b`$, in contrast to case 29; removing both cDs and spirals restores the FP to the intermediate values obtained by including both populations.

Figure 3 shows the fitted values in each case for various pairs of the parameters, in order to show their distributions and correlations. The cases are numbered following Table 4. The dots show the distribution of fits obtained for 1000 simulations of the standard case (case 1) after removing the effects of the residual biases. The main point to note is that, with only a few exceptions (noted above), the systematic differences in the fits derived for difference cases are comparable to the random errors in the determination of the parameters for the standard case. We conclude that the uncertainties in our best-fit FP parameters are dominated by the random errors and not by systematic effects from the fitting method. In particular we conclude that the following inputs have relatively little effect on the fitted FP: the absorption correction, the cosmological model, the assumed mean FP shift and the choice of the second and third FP axes. Our standard case provides an optimum fit to the FP because: (i) it excludes the galaxies with poor structural parameters and velocity dispersion measurements which artificially inflate the scatter about the FP and the uncertainty in the FP parameters; (ii) it applies a selection function cutoff that balances over-weighting a small number of galaxies against biasing the results by ignoring galaxies with low selection probabilities; (iii) it uses clusters with 6 or more galaxies to avoid artificially reducing FP scatter by confusing scatter with peculiar velocities while yet retaining a sufficiently large overall number of galaxies to keep the random errors in the FP parameters small.

### 4.3 Comparison with previous work

Table 5 compares the best-fit EFAR FP with previous determinations in the literature, noting both the passband to which the relation applies and the method of the fit. To match the usage in most of this literature, we present the FP in the form $`R_e\sigma _0^A\mathrm{\Sigma }_e^B`$, where $`\sigma _0`$ is the central velocity dispersion and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_e`$ is the mean surface brightness (in linear units) within the effective radius $`R_e`$. The exponents of this relation are related to the coefficients of our FP relation, $`\mathrm{log}R_e=a\mathrm{log}\sigma +bSB_e+c`$, by $`A`$=$`a`$ and $`B`$=$``$2.5$`b`$. The table also quotes the fractional distance error, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, corresponding to the rms scatter about the FP in $`R_e`$. In most cases the determination of the FP is limited to galaxies with $`\sigma `$$`>`$100 km s-1. The forward and inverse fitting methods are linear regressions with, respectively, $`\mathrm{log}R_e`$ and $`\mathrm{log}\sigma `$ as the independent variable; orthogonal fitting minimises the residuals orthogonal to the FP, while mean regression averages the fits obtained by taking each of $`\mathrm{log}R_e`$, $`\mathrm{log}\sigma `$ and $`SB_e`$ as the independent variable.

The first point to note is that all the fitted values of $`B`$ are consistent within the errors, regardless of passband and fitting method. The second point to note is that this is not true for $`A`$, which has a higher value in the $`K`$-band FP fit of Pahre et al. (1998) than in any of the optical fits. The third point is that, within the optical FP fits, the forward and inverse fits give, respectively, lower and higher values of $`A`$ than the orthogonal and mean regressions and the maximum likelihood gaussian method. This is consistent with the analysis and simulations of the methods carried out in Paper VI: for samples in which the errors in $`\sigma `$ dominate and/or selection cuts are applied in $`R_e`$ (as is the case for most of these datasets), the value of $`A`$ will be under-estimated by a forward fit and over-estimated by an inverse fit. Orthogonal and mean regressions reduce these biases, with the least bias being produced with the maximum likelihood method. We conclude that apparent differences between FP fits in optical passbands are due to differences in the fitting methods that have been applied.

There is also consistency on the observed scatter about the FP as represented by the fractional distance error, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. With the exception of Lucey et al. (1991), the observed errors are all in the range 17% to 21%. This is consistent with (i.e. larger than) the estimated intrinsic scatter about the FP of 15% that we derive from the EFAR sample, and the range corresponds to the range of measurement errors in the various studies, which account for between 8% and 15% of the observed scatter.

## 5 DISTANCES AND PECULIAR VELOCITIES

In order to determine distances and peculiar velocities, we re-apply the maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm to the whole cluster sample. This time we fix the parameters of the intrinsic galaxy distribution at their best-fit values (case 1 of Table 4) and fit only for the shift of the FP for each cluster.

### 5.1 Sample

We remove outliers (interlopers from the cluster foreground or background, objects which genuinely do not lie on the FP, and objects with bad data) by excluding the galaxies that deviate most from the fitted FP until all clusters have FP fits with $`\chi ^2/\nu `$$`<`$3. To check that this procedure is conservative, we visually inspected each cluster’s distribution of $`D_gD_c`$ (individual galaxy distances relative to the overall cluster distance, from the residuals about the best-fit FP) with respect to $`cz_gcz_c`$ (individual galaxy redshifts relative to the overall cluster redshift). The rejected galaxies were invariably clear outliers in these distributions. In all, 36 galaxies were rejected using this procedure, including all the galaxies rejected from the FP fit (see Table 2). The list of galaxies excluded from the peculiar velocity fits is given in Table 6. There were three clusters with $`\chi ^2/\nu `$$`>`$3 (CAN 2=A85 with 4 galaxies, CAN 55=P386-2 with 2 galaxies, CAN 79=A2589 with 5 galaxies) for which half or more of the galaxies had to be rejected in order to obtain a good FP fit, so that it was difficult to determine which galaxies were the outliers. Although we give distances and peculiar velocities for these clusters below (using all the available galaxies), we exclude them from further analysis.

### 5.2 Bias corrections

To the extent that its assumptions are justified, the maximum likelihood gaussian algorithm accounts for the effects of biases on the estimated distances which are due to the selection function of the galaxies within each cluster. (We refer to this bias as ‘selection bias’ rather than ‘Malmquist bias’ because, following the usage of Strauss & Willick (1995), the effect is due to the selection criteria and not the line-of-sight density distribution.) As discussed in Paper VI, however, the sample selection function parameter $`D_{Wj}^0`$ varies with cluster redshift, introducing a redshift-dependent bias in the peculiar velocity estimates. Although this bias is reduced by the selection limit $`D_{Wi}`$$`>`$$`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$ imposed on galaxy sizes (see §3), clusters with $`D_{Wj}^0`$$`>`$$`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$ are nonetheless sampled differently to clusters with $`D_{Wj}^0`$$``$$`D_{W\mathrm{cut}}`$. This difference in the way the FP galaxy distribution is sampled in different clusters leads to a residual bias in the clusters’ fitted FP offsets and peculiar velocities as a function of $`D_{Wj}^0`$ (or redshift, with which $`D_{Wj}^0`$ is closely correlated).

This effect is investigated in detail through simulations in Paper VI. Figure 4 shows the residual selection bias determined from 1000 simulations of the EFAR dataset. For clusters with redshifts below the sample mean the bias in the peculiar velocities is small and negative, while for clusters at redshifts above the sample mean it is positive and increases rapidly with redshift. We correct this systematic bias individually for each cluster by subtracting the mean error in the FP offset determined from 1000 simulations of the EFAR dataset before computing the cluster distances and peculiar velocities. The size of the corrections are shown in the inset histograms of Figure 4. For the subsample of clusters included in subsequent analyses of the peculiar velocities (whose selection is discussed below), the amplitude of the bias correction is less than 250 km s-1 for 40 of the 50 clusters. The random errors in the peculiar velocities are typically of order 1000 km s-1, while the uncertainties in the peculiar velocity bias corrections for these clusters are typically less than 50 km s-1. To the extent that the simulated datasets match the real distribution of galaxies in the FP, therefore, the bias corrections should not significantly increase the random errors in the peculiar velocities.

### 5.3 Results

The individual FP fits are shown in Figure 5, where the fixed parameters of the galaxy distribution used to fit the FP shift are given at the top of the plot. Each panel corresponds to a cluster, labelled by its CAN; the 29 clusters used to derive the parameters of the galaxy distribution are indicated by bold labels. The area of each point is proportional to the selection weight of the galaxy; the corresponding GINs are given at left. The solid line is the major axis of the global fit to the FP, and the cross on this line the centre of the global galaxy distribution, ($`\overline{\mathrm{log}\sigma }`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{log}R_e}`$$``$$`b`$$`\overline{SB_e}`$). The dotted lines and ellipse are the major and minor axes and the 3$`\sigma `$ contour of the cluster’s FP, vertically offset from the global FP by the cluster’s FP shift. The cluster’s mean redshift $`cz`$, distance $`D`$, and peculiar velocity $`V_{\mathrm{pec}}`$, each with its estimated error, are given at the bottom of the panel. The distances and peculiar velocities are corrected for the residual selection bias discussed above.

The results are summarised in Table 7, which for each cluster gives: CAN, cluster name (in parentheses for fore- and background groups), number of galaxies used in the distance determination, Galactic longitude and latitude, the bias-corrected FP shift $`\delta `$ and its uncertainty, the bias correction $`ϵ_\delta `$ that was subtracted from the raw value of $`\delta `$, the cluster redshift $`cz`$ and its uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }cz`$, and the bias-corrected values of the cluster distance $`D`$ and its uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }D`$, the redshift $`cz_D`$ corresponding to $`D`$, and the peculiar velocity $`V`$ and its uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$. Note that some clusters are missing from this list: CAN 81 because it has been combined with CAN 80 (see Paper II); CANs 41, 47, 54 and a number of the fore- and background groups (CANs$`>`$100) because no cluster members meet the selection criteria.

### 5.4 Tests and comparisons

Gibbons et al. (2000) have suggested that the large peculiar velocities found for some clusters are due to poor FP fits. For a heterogeneous sample of 20 clusters drawn from their own observations and the literature, they find that nearly half are poorly-fit by a FP and have twice the rms scatter of the well-fit clusters. The half of their clusters that have good FP fits all have peculiar velocities that are consistent with them being at rest in the CMB frame; the poorly-fit clusters show a much larger range of peculiar velocities. Gibbons et al. suggest that the large peculiar velocities detected for some clusters may result from those clusters being poorly fit (for whatever reason) by the global FP. The origin of the poor fits is not known, but the possibilities include intrinsic FP variations between clusters, failure to identify and remove interlopers, observational errors, the heterogeneity of the data, and combinations of these effects.

We therefore need to test whether some of the peculiar velocities we derive from the EFAR dataset are due to poor fits to the FP rather than genuine peculiar velocities. Figure 6 shows the peculiar velocities of the EFAR clusters as a function of the goodness-of-fit of their best-fit FP (as measured by the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ statistic). As noted above, even after removing outliers, there are still three clusters with very poor FP fits ($`\chi ^2/\nu `$$`>`$3; in fact CAN 2=A85 actually has $`\chi ^2/\nu `$=11, but is plotted at $`\chi ^2/\nu `$=5 for convenience). All three of these clusters have large negative peculiar velocities, detected at nominal significance levels of 1.8–2.5$`\sigma `$. The poor quality of the FP fits raises considerable doubts about the reality of the peculiar velocity estimates, however, and we therefore omit these clusters from all subsequent analysis. The remaining clusters generally have acceptable fits ($`\chi ^2/\nu `$$``$1). There are 10 clusters with $`\chi ^2/\nu `$=2–3, but none of these have significant peculiar velocities (the strongest detection is at the 1.8$`\sigma `$ level). Apart from the three clusters with $`\chi ^2/\nu `$$`>`$3, the clusters are all adequately fitted by the global FP, and there is no evidence for any increased scatter in the peculiar velocities for poorer FP fits.

Another possible source of systematic errors are the small biases in the recovered parameters of the best-fitting FP (see §4 above). If we apply the corrections for these biases derived from our simulations (Figure 2) and re-derive the peculiar velocities with this bias-corrected FP, we find that the peculiar velocities of the clusters are not significantly altered: the peculiar velocity of Coma changes by +14 km s-1, and the rms difference in peculiar velocity between our standard solution and the bias-corrected solution is only 67 km s-1.

We can also attempt to test whether differences in the mean stellar populations between clusters produce spurious peculiar velocities, by looking for a correlation between the peculiar velocities and the offset of each cluster from the global Mg–$`\sigma `$ relation derived in Paper V. The correlation coefficient for the distribution (shown in Figure 7) is $``$0.30, but 1000 simulations of the observed distribution show that, allowing for the estimated errors, this value does not indicate a correlation significant at the 95% level. However, while there is no positive evidence that stellar population differences are leading to spurious peculiar velocities, this test cannot rule out this possibility. Figure 10 of Paper V shows that the joint distribution of residuals about the FP and Mg–$`\sigma `$ relations is consistent with simple stellar population models if one invokes sufficiently large (and possibly correlated) scatter in the ages and metallicities of the galaxies. Against this possibility we can set the generally good agreement between the distance estimates obtained from the FP and other methods (such as the Tully-Fisher relation and surface brightness fluctuations) which have different dependences on the stellar populations.

Finally, we can perform a direct comparison between the peculiar velocities we measure and those obtained by other groups for the same clusters. Figure 8 shows comparisons with the Tully-Fisher estimates of Giovanelli et al. (1998b; SCI) and Dale et al. (1999b; SCII), and the FP estimates of Hudson et al. (1997; SMAC) and Gibbons et al. (2000; GFB). The flattening in the $`V_{\mathrm{EFAR}}`$$`V_{\mathrm{other}}`$ distributions is due to the fact that the uncertainties in the EFAR peculiar velocities are generally larger than those of the other measurements—although the error per galaxy is similar in all cases, the EFAR sample typically has a smaller number of galaxies per cluster. A $`\chi ^2`$-test shows that the peculiar velocity measurements are consistent within the errors in all three comparisons.

## 6 BULK MOTIONS

### 6.1 Cluster sample

In analysing the peculiar motions of the clusters in the EFAR sample we confine ourselves to the subsample of clusters with 3 or more galaxies ($`N_g`$$``$3), $`cz`$$``$15000 km s-1 and $`\delta V`$$``$1800 km s-1. These criteria are illustrated in Figure 9, and are chosen because: (i) they eliminate all the fore- and background clusters, for which the selection functions have not been directly measured and are only poorly approximated by the selection function of the main cluster onto which they are projected; (ii) they eliminate the clusters with only 1 or 2 galaxies in the FP fit, where it is not possible to check if galaxies are cluster interlopers or FP outliers; (iii) they eliminate the higher-redshift clusters, which have proportionally higher uncertainties in their peculiar velocities (and in any case sample the volume beyond $`cz`$=15000 km s-1 too sparsely to be useful); (iv) they eliminate clusters with large uncertainties in their peculiar velocities, resulting from large measurement errors for individual galaxies exacerbated by a small number of galaxies in the cluster—restricting the subsample to $`\delta V`$$``$1800 km s-1 (the peculiar velocity error for a cluster with a FP distance from 3 galaxies with a distance error per galaxy of 20%) represents a compromise between using clusters with better-determined peculiar velocities and keeping the largest possible cluster sample.

We also eliminate from the sample the three clusters which were identified in the previous section as having unacceptably poor FP fits (CAN 2=A85, CAN 55=P386-2 and CAN 79=A2589); two of these would be eliminated in any case: A85 because it has $`cz`$$`>`$15000 km s-1, and P386-2 because it has only two galaxies. We also eliminate the two components of A548 (CAN 35=A548-1 and CAN 36=A548-2), since the substructure in this region (Zabludoff et al. 1993, Davis et al. 1995) makes cluster membership problematic and since the high relative velocity of the two main subclusters is not relevant to the large-scale motions we are investigating (Watkins 1997).

The subsample selected in this way for the analysis of the peculiar motions comprises 50 clusters (25 in HCB, 25 in PPC); they are indicated by an asterisk in Table 7. The distribution of the peculiar velocity uncertainties for this subsample is shown in the inset to Figure 9); the median peculiar velocity error is 1060 km s-1. Figure 10 shows the projection of the sample on the sky in Galactic coordinates, with the amplitude of the clusters’ peculiar velocities in the CMB frame indicated by the size of the symbols. Inflowing clusters (circles) and outflowing clusters (asterisks) are fairly evenly distributed over the survey regions. The median direction of the clusters belonging to the peculiar velocity sample in the HCB region is ($`l`$,$`b`$)=(42,48), and in the PPC region is ($`l`$,$`b`$)=(152,-36); the angle between these two directions is 128.

### 6.2 Bulk motions

The peculiar velocities of the sample clusters as a function of redshift are shown in Figure 11. The mean peculiar velocity of the whole sample ($`V`$=159$`\pm `$158 km s-1) is consistent, within the errors, with no net inflow or outflow. This need not have been the case, as the FP zeropoint is based on the 29 clusters listed in Table 3, which make up only 26 of the 50 clusters in the peculiar velocity sample. The mean peculiar velocities of each of the two sample regions separately are also consistent with zero inflow or outflow: $`V_{\mathrm{HCB}}`$=$`+`$383$`\pm `$229 km s-1; $`V_{\mathrm{PPC}}`$=$``$65$`\pm `$217 km s-1. A $`\chi ^2`$ test shows that the observed peculiar velocities are consistent with strictly zero motions (i.e. no bulk or random motions at all) at the 2% level. If the one cluster with a 3$`\sigma `$ peculiar velocity detection (J19, CAN=59) is omitted, this rises to 8%. If the peculiar velocity errors were under-estimated by 5% (10%), then the fit is consistent at the 6% (15%) level. If random thermal motions with an rms of 250 km s-1 (500 km s-1) are assumed, then the fit is consistent at the 5% (30%) level. There is, therefore, no evidence in the EFAR sample for significant bulk motions in the HCB or PPC volumes.

The components in Supergalactic coordinates of the mean peculiar velocity in redshift shells are shown in Figure 12. There is no sign of any trend with redshift in the mean peculiar velocity, either for the whole sample or for the two regions separately. None of the components of the mean peculiar velocity are significant in any redshift bin apart from the 12000–13000 km s-1 bin in HCB, which is due to J19 (CAN=59)—cf. Figure 11.

We can estimate the intrinsic dispersion of the peculiar velocity field using the maximum likelihood approach described in Paper VI (see Section 2.1 and Appendix A; cf. Watkins 1997). The upper panels of Figure 13 show the distributions of peculiar velocities, both radially and in Supergalactic coordinates, for the HCB and PPC regions separately and for the whole sample. The peculiar velocities in all cases have means close to zero, and the question is how large an intrinsic dispersion is required, combined with the observational uncertainties, to reproduce the observed scatter in the peculiar velocities. The lower panels of Figure 13 show the relative likelihood, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}=\mathrm{ln}_{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{ln}`$, as a function of the assumed intrinsic dispersion. The most likely estimate of the three-dimensional velocity dispersion for the whole sample is about 600 km s-1, but the 1$`\sigma `$ range is 0–1200 km s-1. The most likely dispersions for the HCB and PPC regions separately are about 300 km s-1 and 700 km s-1 respectively. Hence the intrinsic dispersion of the clusters’ peculiar velocities is not well-determined by this data, due to the large uncertainties in the observed peculiar velocities.

### 6.3 Comparisons with other results

A comparison of the EFAR bulk motion to other measurements of bulk motions on various scales, and to theoretical predictions, is given in Figure 14. The figure shows the reported bulk motions from a number of other observational studies as a function of the effective scale of the sample. Also shown is the theoretical prediction for the bulk motion measured with a top-hat window function of radius $`R`$ (in h-1 Mpc) for a fairly ‘standard’ flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology having a power spectrum with shape parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=0.25, normalisation $`\sigma _8`$=1.0 and Hubble constant $`h`$=0.7 (corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$=0.36 and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$=0.64; see, e.g., Coles & Lucchin 1995, p.399).

This comparison is limited by a number of factors: (i) The finite, sparse and non-uniform observed samples do not have top-hat window functions, and their effective scales $`R`$ are not well-defined (compare this figure with the similar figure in Dekel (2000)); this uncertainty is ameliorated by the slow decrease in the expected bulk motion with scale. (ii) Only the amplitudes of the bulk motions are compared, and not the directions; however, the observed bulk motions that are significantly different from zero have a common direction to within about 30, close to the direction of the CMB dipole. (iii) The uncertainties in the measured bulk motions are only crudely estimated in some studies, and ignore or under-estimate the systematic biases. Despite these limitations, the figure does show that, allowing for both observational uncertainties and cosmic variance, the measured bulk motions are in most cases quite consistent with the theoretical predictions (which vary relatively little for any model that is consistent with the currently-accepted ranges of the cosmological parameters). In this section and the next we determine the extent to which the EFAR results are consistent with the models and with the possibly-discrepant results of Lauer & Postman (1994; ACIF) and Hudson et al. (1999; SMAC). The bulk flow obtained by Willick (1999; LP10K) is similar to the SMAC result, and is not considered explicitly.

We can test whether the observed EFAR peculiar velocity field is consistent with the bulk motions claimed by other authors. The bulk motion of the Lauer & Postman (1994) cluster sample in the CMB frame, based on brightest cluster galaxy distances as re-analysed by Colless (1995), is 764 km s-1 in the direction ($`l`$,$`b`$)=(341,49). This direction is only 39 from the median direction of the HCB clusters in the EFAR sample, and its antipole is just 15 from the median direction of the PPC clusters. Consequently the EFAR sample is able to provide a strong test of the existence of the Lauer & Postman bulk motion. Figure 15a shows the peculiar velocities of the EFAR sample as a function of the cosine of their angle with respect to the direction of the Lauer & Postman dipole. The best-fit bulk flow in the Lauer & Postman direction has $`V`$=250$`\pm `$209 km s-1, and is consistent with zero at the 1.2$`\sigma `$ level. A $`\chi ^2`$ test finds that a pure Lauer & Postman bulk motion of 764 km s-1 in this direction is consistent with the data at only the 0.2% level.

The bulk motion of the SMAC sample, for which peculiar velocities are derived from FP distances by Hudson et al. (1999), is 630 km s-1 in the direction ($`l`$,$`b`$)=(260,$``$1). The median direction of the HCB clusters is 57 from the antipole of this motion, and the median direction of the PPC clusters is 76 from the antipole. Hence the EFAR sample is less well-suited to testing for bulk motions in this direction. Nonetheless, the formal rejection of the SMAC motion is even stronger than for the Lauer & Postman motion. Figure 15b shows the peculiar velocities of the EFAR sample as a function of the cosine of their angle with respect to the SMAC dipole. The best-fit bulk flow along the SMAC direction has $`V`$=$``$536$`\pm `$330 km s-1 (i.e. in the opposite direction), and is consistent with zero bulk motion at the 1.6$`\sigma `$ level. A $`\chi ^2`$ test finds that a pure SMAC bulk motion of 630 km s-1 in this direction is consistent with the data at only the 0.04% level.

It is worth noting that an observed bulk flow amplitude of zero would be consistent with the Lauer & Postman flow at less than the 0.2% level, but consistent with the SMAC flow at the 3.2% level—if the real bulk flow is small, therefore, the apparently high significance of the rejection of the SMAC flow may be the result of the large uncertainty in the observed amplitude of the flow.

These $`\chi ^2`$ tests do not take into account the correlated errors in the peculiar velocity estimates. We therefore carry out Monte Carlo simulations of the EFAR dataset, including the effects of the correlated errors, in order to check the consistency of the observed peculiar velocities with the claimed bulk flows of Lauer & Postman (LP) and Hudson et al. (SMAC). Figure 16 shows the distributions of the bulk flow amplitudes recovered from 500 simulations of the LP and SMAC bulk motions. The mean values of the recovered bulk flow amplitude ($`V_{\mathrm{sim}}`$) are very close to the true values ($`V_{\mathrm{LP}}`$ or $`V_{\mathrm{SMAC}}`$), although in each case there is a small but statistically significant bias. However the value of the bulk flow amplitude derived from the actual EFAR dataset ($`V_{\mathrm{obs}}`$) is in both cases far out on the wing of the distribution: only one of the 500 simulations of the Lauer & Postman flow, and none of the 500 simulations of the SMAC flow, yields a bulk flow amplitude less than the observed value. Hence the observations are consistent with a pure Lauer & Postman bulk flow only at the 0.2% level, and with a pure SMAC bulk flow at less than the 0.2% level. The correlated errors in the peculiar velocities do not significantly alter the results obtained from the $`\chi ^2`$ tests.

### 6.4 Comparisons with theoretical models

The above comparisons assume pure bulk flows and ignore the greater complexity of the real velocity field. We can make more realistic comparisons if we adopt a more detailed model for the velocity field. In principle this approach also allows us to use the observed peculiar velocities to discriminate between different cosmological models. The velocity field models are characterised by a mass power spectrum, which determines the velocity field on large scales where the dynamics are linear, and a small-scale rms ‘thermal’ motion, $`\sigma _{}`$, which approximates the effects of non-linear dynamics on small scales. Given such a model, the method for computing the expected bulk flow in a particular sample, and for estimating the probability of an observed bulk flow, has been developed by Kaiser (1988) and Feldman & Watkins (1994, 1998).

As shown by Feldman & Watkins (1994), the covariance matrix for the maximum likelihood estimator of the bulk flow in a sample is given by the sum of a ‘noise’ term, which depends on the spatial distribution of the clusters, the errors in their peculiar velocities and the thermal rms motions, and a ‘velocity’ term, which also depends on the power spectrum of the assumed cosmological model. We adopt a thermal rms motion of $`\sigma _{}`$=250 km s-1. Although this value is not well-determined it has little effect on the results (as we show below), since it enters in quadrature sum with the uncertainties on the cluster peculiar velocities, which are generally much larger (see Table 7). Our adopted cosmological model has a CDM-like power spectrum with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=0.25 and $`\sigma _8`$=1.0, consistent with the power spectrum measured from the APM galaxy survey (Baugh & Efstathiou 1993) and the PSCz redshift survey (Sutherland et al. 1999). This corresponds to the currently-favoured flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology with $`H_0`$$``$70 km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$$``$0.35 and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$$``$0.65.

The survey’s sensitivity to the power spectrum is determined by its window function. Figure 17a shows the window function for the EFAR sample along the Supergalactic X, Y and Z axes; the Y axis in particular shows the effect of correlated errors resulting from not having a full-sky sample. The model power spectrum is shown in Figure 17b. The product of the power spectrum and the window function, shown in Figure 17c, gives the relative contributions of different scales to the covariance in the measured bulk velocity. The bulk velocity depends on a broad range of scales, with the largest contributions coming from scales of a few hundred h-1 Mpc.

For the EFAR survey the ‘noise’ component of the covariance matrix (in Supergalactic coordinates) is

$$R_{ij}^ϵ=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill +101655& \hfill +47914& \hfill 24001\\ \hfill +47914& \hfill +65373& \hfill 39617\\ \hfill 24001& \hfill 39617& \hfill +87567\end{array}\right]$$
(13)
while the ‘velocity’ component is

$$R_{ij}^v=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill +37169& \hfill +17211& \hfill 344\\ \hfill +17211& \hfill +23165& \hfill 6084\\ \hfill 344& \hfill 6084& \hfill +20980\end{array}\right].$$
(14)
Thus the overall covariance matrix $`𝑹`$ is

$$R_{ij}=R_{ij}^ϵ+R_{ij}^v=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill +138824& \hfill +65125& \hfill 24345\\ \hfill +65125& \hfill +88538& \hfill 45701\\ \hfill 24345& \hfill 45701& \hfill +108547\end{array}\right].$$
(15)
It is immediately apparent that (for the model considered here) the covariance matrix is dominated by the ‘noise’ term.

The maximum likelihood estimate, $`𝑼`$, for the bulk flow of the sample clusters is given by

$$U_i=R_{ij}^ϵ\underset{n}{}\frac{\widehat{r}_{n,j}v_n}{\sigma _n^2+\sigma _{}^2}$$
(16)
where $`U_i`$ is the $`i`$th component of the bulk flow, $`R_{ij}^ϵ`$ is the ‘noise’ covariance matrix, $`\widehat{r}_{n,j}`$ is the $`j`$th component of the unit vector of the $`n`$th cluster, $`v_n`$ and $`\sigma _n`$ are the cluster’s peculiar velocity and its uncertainty, and $`\sigma _{}`$ is the assumed rms thermal motion of the model. For the EFAR sample, the maximum likelihood bulk flow vector in Supergalactic coordinates is ($``$24, $``$6, $`+`$717) km s-1, almost entirely in the SGZ axis. In Galactic coordinates this is 718 km s-1 in the direction ($`l`$,$`b`$)=(45.4,$`+`$5.9).

However this formal result is rather ill-determined, since it is far from the main axis of the EFAR sample (cf. Figure 10). An indication of the uncertainty can be obtained by ignoring the cross-correlations in the covariance matrix and estimating the rms error as $`(\mathrm{Trace}(R^ϵ))^{1/2}`$=505 km s-1. In the context of the assumed cosmological model, the probability of measuring a bulk flow vector $`𝑼`$ can be obtained by computing the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic from the covariance matrix as

$$\chi ^2=U_iR_{ij}^1U_j.$$
(17)
The probability (given the cosmological model and the properties of the sample) of observing a bulk flow with a value of $`\chi ^2`$ greater than this is given by the appropriate integral over the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution with 3 degrees of freedom (the 3 components of $`𝑼`$). For the EFAR sample this procedure yields $`\chi ^2`$=6.1 with 3 degrees of freedom, and hence the observed bulk flow is consistent with the model at the 11% confidence level. If the rms thermal motion $`\sigma _{}`$ is set to be zero rather than 250 km s-1, the observations are still consistent with the model at the 9% confidence level.

The expectation value for the bulk motion (given the cosmological model and the properties of the sample) can be obtained as

$$V=\frac{(\sigma _1\sigma _2\sigma _3)^1}{(2\pi )^{3/2}}|V|\mathrm{exp}\left(\underset{i}{}\frac{V_i^2}{2\sigma _i^2}\right)d^3V,$$
(18)
where $`\sigma _1`$, $`\sigma _2`$ and $`\sigma _3`$ are the lengths of the axes of the covariance ellipsoid obtained from the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix. The directions of these axes are given by the (orthogonal) eigenvectors of the covariance matrix. For the EFAR sample and our adopted cosmological model, these eigenvalues and eigenvectors (in Supergalactic coordinates) are

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \sigma _1=454\text{ km\hspace{0.17em}s}\text{-1}& \hfill 𝒆_\mathrm{𝟏}=(+0.7026,+0.5604,0.4385),& \\ \hfill \sigma _2=309\text{ km\hspace{0.17em}s}\text{-1}& \hfill 𝒆_\mathrm{𝟐}=(+0.5679,0.0703,+0.8201),& \\ \hfill \sigma _3=185\text{ km\hspace{0.17em}s}\text{-1}& \hfill 𝒆_\mathrm{𝟑}=(0.4287,+0.8253,+0.3676).& \end{array}$$
(19)
The corresponding directions in Galactic coordinates are $`𝒆_\mathrm{𝟏}`$=(172.6,$`+`$30.6), $`𝒆_\mathrm{𝟐}`$=(82.0,$`+`$1.2), and $`𝒆_\mathrm{𝟑}`$=(350.0,$`+`$59.4). We therefore find an expectation value for the amplitude of the bulk flow of 619 km s-1, so that the observed value is not much larger than that expected from our model, as the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic indicates. It is worth noting that the expected bulk flow amplitude is strongly dominated by the ‘noise’ term in the covariance matrix. For our adopted cosmological model in the absence of noise, we would expect to measure a bulk flow amplitude from the EFAR sample of only 355 km s-1, whereas in the absence of any cosmological velocities, the noise in our measurement would still lead us to expect a bulk flow amplitude of 553 km s-1.

We obtain a smaller upper limit on the bulk motion we if consider only the component of the bulk flow along the minimum-variance axis of the covariance ellipsoid. Unsurprisingly, this axis, $`𝒆_\mathrm{𝟑}`$=(350.0,$`+`$59.4), is just 20 away from the median axis of the 50 clusters in the peculiar velocity sample, $`(l,b)`$=(7,$`+`$42). The expected bulk flow amplitude along this axis is 147 km s-1 (124 km s-1 from noise alone, 76 km s-1 from model alone), while the maximum likelihood estimate of the observed bulk motion is 269 km s-1. Since $`\sigma _3`$=185 km s-1, this gives $`\chi ^2`$=2.11 with 1 degree of freedom, implying that the observed bulk motion in this direction is consistent with the model at the 15% confidence level.

Thus there is no evidence that the bulk motion of the EFAR sample is inconsistent with a cosmological model having a CDM-like power spectrum with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=0.25 and $`\sigma _8`$=1.0, consistent with the best current determinations. In fact, repeating this analysis, we find that the observations are consistent with a wide range of cosmological models, including both standard CDM and open, low-density CDM models.

We can also ask to what extent the EFAR sample is capable of testing whether the bulk motions measured by Lauer & Postman (1994), SMAC (Hudson et al. 1999) and LP10K (Willick 1999) are consistent with the velocity field model. To do so we use the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic computed according to equation 17, inserting the EFAR covariance matrix for $`𝑹`$ and the observed Lauer & Postman, SMAC or LP10K bulk motions for $`𝑼`$. If the EFAR bulk motion had been found to be identical to the SMAC result, it would have been consistent with the velocity field model at the 25% level; if it had been found to be identical to the LP10K result it would have been consistent with the model at the 9% level. However a bulk motion identical to the Lauer & Postman result would have been rejected at the 0.09% level. Hence, as expected, the directionality of the EFAR sample means that while it would have provided a strong indication of an inconsistency with the model if the Lauer & Postman result had been recovered, recovery of the SMAC or LP10K results would not have implied a problem with the model.

We can generalise this analysis to illustrate how the directionality of the EFAR sample affects the constraints it could place on observed bulk motions in different directions. Figure 18 shows, in each direction on the sky, the amplitude of the observed bulk motion that would be rejected as inconsistent with the velocity field model at the 1% confidence level using equation 17.

It is important to emphasise that although it would not have been surprising, under this model, to have recovered the SMAC motion from the EFAR sample, in fact the tests of the previous section indicated that the actual motions recovered from the EFAR sample are highly inconsistent with a pure SMAC bulk flow. As already noted, however, because those tests do not use a full velocity field model and do not account for the window function of the sample, they will tend to over-estimate the degree of inconsistency. The best test is a simultaneous consistency check between both datasets and the model (Watkins & Feldman 1995), determining the joint probability of deriving both the observed EFAR bulk motion from the EFAR sample and the observed SMAC motion from the SMAC sample under the assumptions of the velocity field model. This type of test has already been carried out for the SMAC sample with respect to various other samples by Hudson et al. (2000), who find consistency with all the other peculiar velocity surveys with the possible exception of Lauer & Postman, and a marginal conflict with a flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model similar to that used here. Once the SMAC peculiar velocities have been published, a similar test can be carried out to check the consistency of the EFAR and SMAC survey results.

## 7 CONCLUSIONS

We have measured peculiar velocities for 84 clusters of galaxies in two large, almost diametrically opposed, regions at distances between 6000 and 15000 km s-1. These velocities are based on Fundamental Plane (FP) distance estimates for early-type galaxies in each cluster. We fit the FP to the best-studied 29 clusters using a maximum likelihood algorithm which takes account of both selection effects and measurement errors and yields FP parameters with smaller bias and variance than other fitting procedures. We obtain a best-fit FP with coefficients consistent with the best existing determinations. Apparent differences in the FPs obtained in previous studies can be reconciled by allowing for the biases imposed by the various fitting methods. We then fix the FP parameters at their best-fit values and derive distances for the whole cluster sample. The resulting peculiar velocities show no evidence for residual systematic errors, and, for the small numbers of clusters in common, are consistent with those measured by other authors.

We have examined the bulk motion of the sample regions using the 50 clusters with the best-determined peculiar velocities. We find the bulk motions in both regions are small, and consistent with zero at about the 5% level. We use both direct $`\chi ^2`$ comparison and the more sophisticated window function covariance analysis developed by Kaiser (1988) and Feldman & Watkins (1994, 1998) to compare our result with the predictions of standard cosmological models and the results of other studies. We find that the bulk motion of our sample is consistent (at about the 10% level) with the prediction of a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with parameters $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=0.25, $`\sigma _8`$=1.0 and $`h`$=0.7; indeed the motion is consistent with most cosmological models having parameters that are broadly consistent with the observed shape and normalisation of the galaxy power spectrum.

We examine whether our results can be reconciled with the large-amplitude bulk motions on similar scales found in some other studies. Our sample lies close to the direction of the large-amplitude dipole motion claimed by Lauer & Postman (1994), so that we are able to make an effective test of the bulk motion in this direction. We find that a pure Lauer & Postman bulk motion is inconsistent with our data at the 0.2% confidence level. This strong rejection of the Lauer & Postman result is supported by the window function covariance analysis. We find an even stronger inconsistency between the EFAR peculiar velocities and the result of the SMAC survey (Hudson et al. 1999), with a pure SMAC bulk motion ruled out at the 0.04% confidence level. This is a surprisingly strong result, given that the main axis of the EFAR sample lies at a large angle to the direction of the SMAC dipole. It will be important to carry out a simultaneous consistency check of both datasets with a full velocity field model using the generalised covariance analysis described by Watkins & Feldman (1995) and Hudson et al. (2000).

To summarise current observations of bulk motions on scales larger than 6000 km s-1: (i) The EFAR and SCII (Dale et al. 1999a) surveys find small bulk motions, close to the predictions of cosmological models that are constrained to be consistent with other large-scale structure observations. (ii) The SMAC survey (Hudson et al. 1999) finds a bulk motion with a much larger amplitude. However a full accounting for the uncertainties and window function of the survey shows that it is in fact only marginally inconsistent with the models (at about the 2$`\sigma `$ level; Hudson et al. 2000). (iii) The LP10K survey finds a bulk motion very similar to the SMAC dipole, but the smaller sample size means that the uncertainties are larger and consequently the result is not inconsistent. (iv) The Lauer & Postman (1994) result is inconsistent with such models at the 3–5% level (Feldman & Watkins 1994). However it is also inconsistent with the EFAR results (at the 0.2% confidence level) and with the other surveys combined (at the 0.6% level; Hudson et al. 2000), and therefore should be treated with reserve. We conclude that existing measurements of large-scale bulk motions provide no significant evidence against standard models for the formation of structure.

## Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by NSF Grant AST90-16930 to DB, AST90-17048 and AST93-47714 to GW, and AST90-20864 to RKM. RPS was supported by DFG grants SFB 318 and 375. The collaboration benefitted from NATO Collaborative Research Grant 900159 and from the hospitality and financial support of Dartmouth College, Oxford University, the University of Durham and Arizona State University. Support was also received from PPARC visitors grants to Oxford and Durham Universities and a PPARC rolling grant ‘Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology in Durham’.


text:
# A superformula for neutrinoless double beta decay II: The short range part

## 1 Introduction

The search for neutrinoless double beta decay has been proven to be one of the most powerful tools to constrain $`BL`$ violating physics beyond the standard model . In recent years, besides the most restrictive limit on the effective neutrino Majorana mass , stringent constraints on several theories beyond the Standard Model such as $`R`$–parity violating  as well as conserving  SUSY, leptoquarks  and left–right symmetric models  have been derived (for a review see ). While the neutrino mass limit is based on the well-known mechanism exchanging a massive Majorana neutrino between two standard model $`VA`$ vertices, the effective vertices appearing in the new contributions involve non–standard currents such as scalar, pseudoscalar and tensor currents. Moreover, besides contributions with a light neutrino being exchanged between two separated vertices, the so-called long-range part, additional contributions from the short range part are expected, e.g. in SUSY without R-parity .

Thus we felt motivated to consider the neutrinoless double beta decay rate in a general framework, parameterizing the new physics contributions in terms of all effective low-energy currents allowed by Lorentz-invariance (see Fig. 1). Such an ansatz allows one to separate the nuclear physics part of double beta decay from the underlying particle physics model, and to derive limits on arbitrary lepton number violating theories. The first step of this work, treating the long–range part (contributions a-c in Fig. 1), has been published in . In the following the remaining part, treating the short range part (contribution d), is presented.

Although the general decay rate is independent of the underlying nuclear physics model, to extract quantitative limits, values of nuclear matrix elements are needed, which have been calculated in  in the (pn)QRPA aproach. Using these, for the first time limits for all potential new physics contributions are derived here.

## 2 General Parametrization

In the short range part the effective interaction can be considered as point-like, thus the decay rate results from first order perturbation theory,

$`R_{0\nu \beta \beta }`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle d^4x(Z+2,A),2e^{}|(x)|(Z,A),}.`$ (1)
The most general Lorentz invariant Lagrangian has the following form

$`={\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2}{2}}m_p^1\{ϵ_1JJj+ϵ_2J^{\mu \nu }J_{\mu \nu }j+ϵ_3J^\mu J_\mu j+ϵ_4J^\mu J_{\mu \nu }j^\nu +ϵ_5J^\mu Jj_\mu `$
$`+ϵ_6J^\mu J^\nu j_{\mu \nu }+ϵ_7JJ^{\mu \nu }j_{\mu \nu }+ϵ_8J_{\mu \alpha }J^{\nu \alpha }j_\nu ^\mu \},`$ (2)
with the proton mass $`m_p`$ and the hadronic currents of defined chirality $`J=\overline{u}(1\pm \gamma _5)d`$, $`J^\mu =\overline{u}\gamma ^\mu (1\pm \gamma _5)d`$, $`J^{\mu \nu }=\overline{u}\frac{i}{2}[\gamma ^\mu ,\gamma ^\nu ](1\pm \gamma _5)d`$ and the leptonic curents $`j=\overline{e}(1\pm \gamma _5)e^C`$, $`j^\mu =\overline{e}\gamma ^\mu (1\pm \gamma _5)e^C`$ , $`j^{\mu \nu }=\overline{e}\frac{i}{2}[\gamma ^\mu ,\gamma ^\nu ](1\pm \gamma _5)e^C`$. In some of the cases the decay rate for the effective coupling $`ϵ_\alpha `$ may depend also on the chirality of the currents involved. In these cases we define $`ϵ_\alpha =ϵ_\alpha ^{xyz}`$, where $`xyz=L/R,L/R,L/R`$ defines the chirality of the hadronic and leptonic currents in the order of appearance in eq. (2). In the cases where it is not necessary to distinguish the different chiralities we suppress this additional index.

In renormalizable theories no fundamental tensors exist. Thus the tensor currents have to result either from Fierz rearrangements or by integrating out heavy particles, when deriving the effective Lagrangian from the fundamental theory and decomposing the expressions obtained in terms of the Lorentz invariant bilinears used above, e.g. from $`\overline{u}\gamma _\mu \gamma _\nu (1+\gamma _5)d=g_{\mu \nu }JiJ_{\mu \nu }`$. Moreover, the contribution of the leptonic tensor current vanishes in s-wave approximation. Since the tensor currents in the rearrangements and decompositions mentioned above are always created together with dominant contributions, the corresponding terms proportional to $`ϵ_6,ϵ_7,ϵ_8`$ can be neglected. The remaining terms are the ones proportional to $`ϵ_1,ϵ_2,ϵ_3,ϵ_4,ϵ_5`$.

Applying the standard nuclear theory methods based on the non-relativistic impulse approximation we derive the general $`0\nu \beta \beta `$-decay half-life formula in s–wave approximation

$`[T_{1/2}^{0\nu \beta \beta }]^1=`$ (3)
$`G_1|{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}}ϵ_i_i|^2+G_2|{\displaystyle \underset{i=4}{\overset{5}{}}}ϵ_i_i|^2+G_3\mathrm{Re}[({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}}ϵ_i_i)({\displaystyle \underset{i=4}{\overset{5}{}}}ϵ_i_i)^{}].`$
Here the phase space factors are

$`G_1=G_{01},G_2={\displaystyle \frac{(m_eR)^2}{8}}G_{09},G_3=\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_eR}{4}}\right)G_{06},`$ (4)
with $`G_{0k}`$ given in  and shown in Table 1.

The nuclear matrix elements in eq. (3) are

$`_1=\alpha _1_{F,N},_2=\alpha _2_{GT,N},`$
$`_3={\displaystyle \frac{m_A^2}{m_Pm_e}}\{_{GT,N}\alpha _3_{F,N}\},`$ (5)
$`_4=\pm \alpha _4_{GT,N},_5=\alpha _5_{F,N}.`$
In the last three cases contractions of hadronic currents with different chiralities lead to different results. The negative sign in $`_3`$ corresponds to $`ϵ_3^{LLz}`$ and $`ϵ_3^{RRz}`$ ($`J_{VA}J_{VA}`$), the positive sign to $`ϵ_3^{LRz}`$ and $`ϵ_3^{RLz}`$ ($`J_{VA}J_{V\pm A}`$). The sign of $`_4`$ is positive for the combinations $`ϵ_4^{LLL}`$, $`ϵ_4^{RRL}`$, $`ϵ_4^{RLR}`$, $`ϵ_4^{LRR}`$ ($`J_{VA}J_{TL/TR}j_{VA}`$ and $`J_{V\pm A}J_{TL/TR}j_{V+A}`$). For the combinations $`ϵ_4^{LLR}`$, $`ϵ_4^{RRR}`$, $`ϵ_4^{RLL}`$, $`ϵ_4^{LRL}`$ ($`J_{VA}J_{TL/TR}j_{V+A}`$ and $`J_{V\pm A}J_{TL/TR}j_{VA}`$) it is negative. The sign of the matrix element $`_5`$ is negative for the left-handed leptonic current ($`ϵ_5^{xyL}`$) and positive for the right-handed one ($`ϵ_5^{xyR}`$).

The standard nuclear matrix elements $`_{F,N}`$ und $`_{GT,N}`$ in eq. (2) are defined as

$$_{GT,N}=<F|\underset{ij}{}\tau _+^{(i)}\tau _+^{(j)}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\left(\frac{R_0}{r_{ij}}\right)F_N(x_A)|I>,$$
(6)
$$_{F,N}=<F|\underset{ij}{}\tau _+^{(i)}\tau _+^{(j)}\left(\frac{R_0}{r_{ij}}\right)F_N(x_A)|I>.$$
(7)
Here $`r_{ij}`$ and $`R_0`$ are the distance of the nucleons involved and the nuclear radius respectively. Numerical values of these matrix elements for 76Ge  in the Quasi Particle Random Phase Approximation(pn-QRPA) are given in Table 1. Uncertainties of nuclear matrix element calculations are discussed in Ref. .

The prefactors $`\alpha _i`$ in eq. (2) are defined as follows,

$`\alpha _1=\left({\displaystyle \frac{F_S^{(3)}}{g_A}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{m_A^2}{m_Pm_e}},\alpha _2=8\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_1^{(3)}}{g_A}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{m_A^2}{m_Pm_e}},`$ (8)
$`\alpha _3=\left({\displaystyle \frac{g_V}{g_A}}\right)^2,\alpha _4={\displaystyle \frac{T_1^{(3)}}{g_A}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_A^2}{m_Pm_e}}\alpha _5={\displaystyle \frac{g_VF_S^{(3)}}{g_A^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_A^2}{m_Pm_e}}.`$
The finite nucleon size is taken into account in a common way  by introducing the nucleon form factors in a dipole form

$$\frac{g_{V,A}(q^2)}{g_{V,A}}=\frac{F_S(q^2)}{F_S}=\frac{T_1^{(3)}(q^2)}{T_1^{(3)}}=\left(1\frac{q^2}{m_A^2}\right)^2,$$
(9)
with $`m_A=0.85`$ GeV, $`g_V=1.0,g_A=1.26`$. The other form factor normalizations have been calculated in Ref.  within the MIT bag model,

$`F_S^{(3)}=0.48,T_1^{(3)}=1.38.`$ (10)
The momentum dependence has been absorbed into the integral over the momentum $`q`$ transferred between two nucleons,

$$F_N(x_A)=4\pi m_A^6r_{ij}\frac{d^3\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{(m_A^2+\stackrel{}{q}^2)^4}e^{i\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{r}_{ij}}=\frac{x_A}{48}(3+3x_A+x_A^2)e^{x_A},$$
(11)
where $`x_A=m_Ar_{ij}`$.

## 3 General $`0\nu \beta \beta `$-decay constraints

Let us extract limits on the lepton-number violating parameters $`ϵ_k`$ in eq. (3) from the experimental lower bound on the $`0\nu \beta \beta `$-decay half-life. The conservative half-life limit of the Heidelberg–Moscow experiment

$`T_{1/2}^{0\nu \beta \beta }>1.810^{25}years(90\%C.L.)`$ (12)
provides at present the most stringent bound. Applying this limit to eq. (3) leads to a complex 5-dimensional exclusion plot for all five parameters $`ϵ_k`$. To make the $`0\nu \beta \beta `$-decay experimental bound more transparent it is a common practice to assume the dominance of one coupling. This means only one non-zero $`ϵ_i`$ is considered at a time (evaluation ”on axis”), while the interference between different contributions is neglected. In this way we obtain the upper bounds on $`ϵ_k`$ listed in Table 2.

In the general case, when more than one $`ϵ_\alpha `$ is involved simultaneously, we deal with the multidimensional exclusion plot. For example, this situation occurs in the left-right symmetric models, see . It also appears natural, if effective couplings are generated in Fierz rearrangements or decompositions of given expressions. In the following, as an example, we dicuss the case of interference of $`ϵ_4^{LRR}`$ and $`ϵ_5^{LRR}`$ contributions (the cut in the $`ϵ_4^{LRR}`$-$`ϵ_5^{LRR}`$-plane), which can result from the decomposition $`\overline{u}\gamma _\mu \gamma _\nu (1+\gamma _5)dJ^\mu j^\nu =(g_{\mu \nu }JiJ_{\mu \nu })J^\mu j^\nu `$ mentioned above. In this case the expression for the inverse half life becomes

$$[T_{1/2}^{0\nu \beta \beta }]^1=|ϵ_4^{LRR}_4+ϵ_5^{LRR}_5|^2G_2,$$
(13)
leading to the exclusion plot shown in Fig. 2. The region outside the ellipse is excluded. It is obvious that the limits on $`ϵ_4^{LRR}`$ and $`ϵ_5^{LRR}`$ in this case are somewhat less stringent (by about 15-20%) than the on-axis limits listed in Table 2. The analogous treatment of other combinations, using the matrix elements listed in Table 1, is straightforward.

## 4 Conclusion

We have presented a general parameterization for the short range part of the neutrinoless double beta decay rate in terms of effective couplings. The resulting bounds are summarized in Table 2. Combined with the long range part already published , this parameterization provides the double beta decay constraints for arbitrary lepton number violating theories beyond the SM.

## Acknowledgement

M.H. would like to acknowledge support by the European Union’s TMR program under grant ERBFMBICT983000. H.P. wants to thank the members of the Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular (C.S.I.C.) Valencia for their kind hospitality. S.G.K. was supported in part by Fondecyt (Chile) under grant 1000717.