2004/03/31 by N. Bouché, Nicolas Bouche, James D. Lowenthal · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/421319
published as Astrophys.J. 609 (2004) 513-524 · 14 pages, 7 Figures, To appear in ApJ, July 10, 2004, minor changes to match the accepted version
arxiv created 2004/06/28 · openalex publication_date 2004/07/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We present our results on the cross-correlation of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) around three damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs) at z abs ≃ 3 from deep [μ I ,AB (sky) ≃ 27.6 mag arcsec -2 ] UBVI KPNO 4 m/MOSAIC images. The large area of the MOSAIC images, 0.31 deg 2 or ~65 × 65 h Mpc comoving at redshift z = 3, allows us to probe the clustering of LBGs on scales up to 20 Mpc comoving. Our survey covers a total of 1 deg 2 and contains ~3000 LBGs with photometric redshifts between 2.8 and 3.5. Using the redshift likelihood distributions with m I as a prior, we selected LBGs within a redshift slice of width W z = 0.15 (corresponding to σ z , the uncertainty in photometric redshifts) centered on the redshift of the absorbers. Within that redshift slice, we find that the DLA-LBG cross-correlation w dg is w dg = (1.62 ± 1.32) × w gg , where w gg is the LBG autocorrelation. This corresponds to a correlation length of r 0 = 5 ± 4.5 h -1 (comoving) (or r 0 = 7 ± 6.8 h Mpc). The cross-correlation is most significant on scales 5-10 Mpc. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we find that w dg is significantly greater than zero at the greater than 95% level. In three other redshift slices that do not contain a DLA, we do not find any evidence of clustering. A larger sample will enable us to discriminate between w dg / w gg < 1 and w dg / w gg > 1, i.e., to test whether DLA halos are more or less massive than LBG halos.