First Investigation of the Clustering Environment of Damped Lyman Alpha Absorbers at z=4

Details First Investigation of the Clustering Environment of Damped Lyman Alpha Absorbers at z=4 First Investigation of the Clustering Environment of Damped Lyman Alpha Absorbers at z=4

2001-03-23

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0103387v2

ApJ 562, 628 (2001)

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

submitted to ApJ, revised version in response to referee's comments, one conclusion changed, 9 pages including 3 color figures

Scientific paper

10.1086/323879

We report the first observations of the clustering environment of damped Lyman alpha absorption systems at z=4. Color selection and photometric redshifts were used to select 44 candidate Lyman-break galaxies brighter than I_AB=25.5 from deep BRI images of the 35 sq. arcmin field containing the quasar BR 0951-04. Multislit spectroscopy of 35 candidate galaxies was performed and 8 of these candidates have been confirmed as z>3.5 Lyman-break galaxies. With only BRI photometry, the photometric redshifts are quite accurate for the spectroscopically confirmed galaxies but have a high rate of misclassification due to color degeneracies between Lyman-break galaxies and low-redshift ellipticals. Both of the z>3.5 galaxies found within 15'' of the quasar line-of-sight appear to be causing absorption systems in the quasar spectrum. We use a battery of statistical tests to look for clustering in the redshift histogram of the z>3.5 galaxies but do not find measurable clustering of these Lyman-break galaxies with the damped Lyman alpha absorbers. With a larger sample of galaxies, our method should determine the cross-correlation between these objects, which probes the bias and hence the mass of the damped Lyman alpha absorbers.

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