Preliminary Target Selection for the DESI Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) Sample

Abstract The DESI survey will observe more than 8 million candidate luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the redshift range 0.3 < z < 1.0. Here we present a preliminary version of the DESI LRG target section developed using Legacy Surveys Data Release 8 g, r, z and W1 photometry. This selection yields a sample with a uniform surface density of ∼600 deg−2 and very low predicted stellar contamination and redshift failure rates. During DESI Survey Validation, updated versions of this selection will be tested and optimized