Correlation Analysis of SFI Peculiar Velocities

We present results of a statistical analysis of the SFI catalog of peculiarvelocities, a recently completed survey of spiral field galaxies with I-bandTully-Fisher distances (Haynes et al. 1999). The velocity field statisticutilized is the velocity correlation function, $\psi_1(r)$ (Gorski et al.1989). The analysis is performed in redshift space, so as to circumventpotential ambiguities connected with inhomogeneous Malmquist bias corrections.The results from the SFI sample are compared with linear-theory predictions. Wegenerate a large set of mock samples, extracted from N-body simulations, whichare used to assess the reliability of our analysis and to estimate theassociated uncertainties. Defining $\eta_8=\sigma_8\Omega_0^{0.6}$, we findthat the measured $\psi_1(r)$ implies a degenerate constraint in the$\eta_8-\Gamma$ plane, with $\eta_8=(0.3 +/- 0.1) (\Gamma/0.2)^{0.5}$, at the$2\sigma$ level, for the inverse Tully-Fisher (ITF) calibration presented inthis paper. Model constraints are quite sensitive to the ITF calibration. Theother ITF calibrations by Giovanelli et al. (1997) and da Costa et al. (1998)both give, for $\Gamma=0.2$, $\eta_8\simeq 0.6$ as the best-fitting value.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, LateX, uses apj.sty, AJ, in press, December 1999 issu