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Description
A study of the group properties of galaxies in our immediate neighborhood provides a singular opportunity to observationally constrain the halo mass function, a fundamental characterization of galaxy formation. Detailed studies of individual groups have provided the coefficients of scaling relations between a proxy for the virial radius, velocity dispersion, and mass that usefully allow groups to be defined over the range 10^10^-10^15^M_{sun}_. At a second hierarchical level, associations are defined as regions around collapsed halos extending to the zero-velocity surface at the decoupling from cosmic expansion. The most remarkable result of the study emerges from the construction of the halo mass function from the sample. At ~10^12^M_{sun}_, there is a jog from the expectation Sheth-Tormen function, such that halo counts drop by a factor ~3 in all lower mass bins.
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