Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): small-scale anisotropic galaxy clustering and the pairwise velocity dispersion of galaxies

The galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion (PVD) can provide important tests of non-standard gravity and galaxy formation models. We describe measurements of the PVD of galaxies in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey as a function of projected separation and galaxy luminosity. Due to the faint magnitude limit (r < 19.8) and highly complete spectroscopic sampling of the GAMA survey, we are able to reliably measure the PVD to smaller scales (r(perpendicular to) = 0.01 h(-1) Mpc) than previous work. The measured PVD at projected separations r(perpendicular to) less than or similar to 1 h(-1) Mpc increases near monotonically with increasing luminosity from sigma(12) approximate to 200 km s(-1) at M-r = -17 mag to sigma(12) approximate to 600 km s(-1) at M-r approximate to -22 mag. Analysis of the Gonzalez-Perez et al. (2014) GALFORM semi-analytic model yields no such trend of PVD with luminosity: the model overpredicts the PVD for faint galaxies. This is most likely a result of the model placing too many low-luminosity galaxies in massive haloes.