Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Tracing galaxy environment using the
  marked correlation function
  We investigate how different galaxy properties - luminosities in u, g, r, J,
K-bands, stellar mass, star formation rate and specific star formation rate
trace the environment in the local universe. We also study the effect of survey
flux limits on galaxy clustering measurements. We measure the two-point
correlation function (2pCF) and marked correlation functions (MCFs) using the
aforementioned properties as marks. We use nearly stellar-mass-complete galaxy
sample in the redshift range 0.1 < z < 0.16 from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly
(GAMA) survey with a flux limit of r < 19.8. Further, we impose a brighter flux
limit of r < 17.8 to our sample and repeat the measurements to study how this
affects galaxy clustering analysis. We compare our results to measurements from
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with flux limits of r < 17.8 and r < 16.8.
We show that the stellar mass is the best tracer of galaxy environment, the
K-band luminosity being a good substitute, although such a proxy sample misses
close pairs of evolved, red galaxies. We also confirm that the u-band
luminosity is a good, but not a perfect proxy of star formation rate in the
context of galaxy clustering. We observe an effect of the survey flux limit on
clustering studies - samples with a higher flux limit (smaller magnitude) miss
some information about close pairs of starburst galaxies.
