A robust estimator of the small-scale galaxy correlation function

We present a new estimator, omega, of the small-scale galaxy correlation function that is robust against the effects of redshift-space distortions and large-scale structures. The estimator is a weighted integral of the redshift space or angular correlation function and is a convolution of the real-space correlation function with a localized filter. This allows a direct comparison with theory, without modelling redshift-space distortions and the large-scale correlation function. This has a number of advantages over the more traditional w(p) estimator, including (i) an insensitivity to large-scale structures and the details of the truncation of the line-of-sight integral, (ii) a well-localized kernel in xi(r) and (iii) being unbinned. We discuss how this estimator would be used in practice, applying it to a sample of mock galaxies selected from the Millennium simulation.