CF-HiZELS survey

We probe comoving volumes of >10^6^Mpc^3^ and find significant overdensities, including an 8.5{sigma} (spectroscopically confirmed) overdensity of H{alpha} emitters at z=0.81. We derive H{alpha}, [OIII] + H{beta} and [OII] luminosity functions at z=0.8, 1.4, 2.2, respectively, and present implications for future surveys such as Euclid. Our uniquely large volumes/areas allow us to subdivide the samples in thousands of randomized combinations of areas and provide a robust empirical measurement of sample/cosmic variance.

We show that surveys for star-forming/emission-line galaxies at a depth similar to ours can only overcome cosmic-variance (errors <10 percent) if they are based on volumes >5x10^5^Mpc^3^; errors on L* and {phi}* due to sample (cosmic) variance on surveys probing ~10^4^ and ~10^5^Mpc^3^ are typically very high: ~300 and ~40-60 percent, respectively.