The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XV. The Photometric Redshift Estimation for Background Sources

 Title The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XV. The Photometric Redshift Estimation for Background Sources Publication Type Journal Article Year of Publication 2014 Authors Raichoor, A, Mei, S, Erben, T, Hildebrandt, H, Huertas-Company, M, Ilbert, O, Licitra, R, Ball, N M, Boissier, S, Boselli, A, Chen, Y-T, Côté, P, Cuillandre, J-C, Duc, P A, Durrell, P R, Ferrarese, L, Guhathakurta, P, Gwyn, S D J, Kavelaars, J J, A. con, L\c, Liu, C, MacArthur, L A, Muller, M, Muñoz, R P, Peng, E W, Puzia, T H, Sawicki, M, Toloba, E, Van Waerbeke, L, Woods, D, Zhang, H Journal \apj Volume 797 Pagination 102 Keywords galaxies: distances and redshifts, galaxies: high-redshift, galaxies: photometry, techniques: photometric Abstract {The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) is an optical imaging survey covering 104 deg$^{2}$ centered on the Virgo cluster. Currently, the complete survey area has been observed in the u*giz bands and one third in the r band. We present the photometric redshift estimation for the NGVS background sources. After a dedicated data reduction, we perform accurate photometry, with special attention to precise color measurements through point-spread function homogenization. We then estimate the photometric redshifts with the Le Phare and BPZ codes. We add a new prior that extends to i $_{AB}$ = 12.5 mag. When using the u* griz bands, our photometric redshifts for 15.5 mag łt}= i łt}\~{} 23 mag or z $_{phot}$ łt}\~{} 1 galaxies have a bias |{$Δ$}z| łt} 0.02, less than 5% outliers, a scatter {$\sigma$}$_{outl.rej.}$, and an individual error on z $_{phot}$ that increases with magnitude (from 0.02 to 0.05 and from 0.03 to 0.10, respectively). When using the u*giz bands over the same magnitude and redshift range, the lack of the r band increases the uncertainties in the 0.3 łt}\~{} z $_{phot}$ łt}\~{} 0.8 range (-0.05 łt} {$Δ$}z łt} -0.02, {$\sigma$}$_{outl.rej}$ \~{} 0.06, 10%-15% outliers, and z $_{phot.err.}$ \~{} 0.15). We also present a joint analysis of the photometric redshift accuracy as a function of redshift and magnitude. We assess the quality of our photometric redshifts by comparison to spectroscopic samples and by verifying that the angular auto- and cross-correlation function w(þetas}) of the entire NGVS photometric redshift sample across redshift bins is in agreement with the expectations. } DOI 10.1088/0004-637X/797/2/102