Superclustering of Faint Galaxies in the Field of a QSO Concentration at z~1.1

Abstract

We report on a wide-area (48' x 9') imaging survey of faint galaxies in R and I bands toward the 1338+27 field where an unusual concentration of five QSOs at z\sim1.1, embedded in a larger-scale clustering of 23 QSOs, is known to exist. Using a quite homogeneous galaxy catalog with a detection completeness limit of I~23.5, we detect a significant clustering signature of faint red galaxies with I > 21 and R-I > 1.2 over a scale extending to ~20h^{-1}_{50} Mpc. Close examination of the color-magnitude diagram, the luminosity function, and the angular correlation function indeed suggests that those galaxies are located at z~1.1 and trace the underlying large-scale structure at that epoch, together with the group of 5 QSOs. Since the whole extent of the cluster of 23 QSOs (~70h^{-1}_{50} Mpc) is roughly similar to the local ``Great Wall'', the area may contain a high-redshift counterpart of superclusters in the local universe.