Herschel-ATLAS: The angular correlation function of submillimetre galaxies at high and low redshift
Rodighiero, G.; de Zotti, G.; Herranz, D.; Lagache, G.; Scott, D.; Burgarella, D.; Fritz, J.; Cooray, A.; Ibar, E.; Negrello, M.; Auld, R.; Baes, M.; Cava, A.; Dariush, A.; Dunne, L.; Dye, S.; Eales, S.; Frayer, D.; Jarvis, M. J.; Leeuw, L.; Serjeant, S.; Verma, A.; Amblard, A.; Pohlen, M.; Maddox, S. J.; Pascale, E.; Gonzalez-Nuevo, J.; Buttiglione, S.; Smith, D. J. B.; Temi, P.; Ivison, R.; Clements, D.; Rigby, E.; Peacock, J. A.; Bonfield, D.; Lopez-Caniego, M.; Benford, D.; Samui, S.; Thompson, M.
United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain
Abstract
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.
Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.