Measurement of the Spatial Cross-Correlation Function of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems and Lyman Break Galaxies

Preprint

17 November 2005

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/0511509

Abstract

We present the first spectroscopic measurement of the spatial cross-correlation function between damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) and Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). We obtained deep u'BVRI images of nine QSO fields with 11 known z ~ 3 DLAs and spectroscopically confirmed 211 R < 25.5 photometrically selected z > 2 LBGs. We find strong evidence for an overdensity of LBGs near DLAs versus random, the results of which are similar to that of LBGs near other LBGs. A maximum likelihood cross-correlation analysis found the best fit correlation length value of r_0 = 2.9^(+1.4)_(-1.5) h^(-1)Mpc using a fixed value of gamma = 1.6. The implications of the DLA-LBG clustering amplitude on the average dark matter halo mass of DLAs are discussed.

Keywords

All Related Versions

Version 1, 2005-11-17, ArXiv
Published version: The Astrophysical Journal, 636 (1), L9.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: