Preliminary Target Selection for the DESI Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) Sample
Rongpu Zhou, Jeffrey A. Newman, Kyle S. Dawson, Daniel J. Eisenstein, David D. Brooks, Arjun Dey, Biprateep Dey, Yutong Duan, Sarah Eftekharzadeh, Enrique Gaztañaga, Robert Kehoe, Martin Landriau, Michael E. Levi, Timothy C. Licquia, Aaron M. Meisner, John Moustakas, Adam D. Myers, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Claire Poppett, Francisco Prada, Anand Raichoor, David J. Schlegel, Michael Schubnell, Ryan Staten, Gregory Tarlé, Christophe Yèche
Abstract
Abstract The DESI survey will observe more than 8 million candidate luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the redshift range 0.3 < z < 1.0. Here we present a preliminary version of the DESI LRG target section developed using Legacy Surveys Data Release 8 g , r , z and W 1 photometry. This selection yields a sample with a uniform surface density of ∼600 deg −2 and very low predicted stellar contamination and redshift failure rates. During DESI Survey Validation, updated versions of this selection will be tested and optimized.