Herschel-ATLAS: The angular correlation function of submillimetre galaxies at high and low redshift

Journal article

We present measurements of the angular correlation function of galaxies selected from the first field of the H-ATLAS survey. Careful removal of the background from galactic cirrus is essential, and currently dominates the uncertainty in our measurements. For our 250 μm-selected sample we detect no significant clustering, consistent with the expectation that the 250 μm-selected sources are mostly normal galaxies at z < 1. For our 350 μm and 500 μm-selected samples we detect relatively strong clustering with correlation amplitudes A of 0.2 and 1.2 at 1', but with relatively large uncertainties. For samples which preferentially select high redshift galaxies at z∼2-3 we detect significant strong clustering, leading to an estimate of r0 ∼ 7-11 h-1 Mpc. The slope of our clustering measurements is very steep, δ ∼ 2. The measurements are consistent with the idea that sub-mm sources consist of a low redshift population of normal galaxies and a high redshift population of highly clustered star-bursting galaxies. © ESO, 2010.

Authors: Maddox, S; Dunne, L; Rigby, E; Eales, S; Cooray, A

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: ASTRONOMY and ASTROPHYSICS
• Volume: 518
• Issue: 3
• Pages: L11-L11
• Publication date: 2010-01-01
• DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201014663
• EISSN: 1432-0746
• ISSN: 0004-6361
• Language: English
• Keywords: galaxies: statistics; submillimeter: galaxies