Survey for Galaxies Associated with z~3 Damped Lyman alpha Systems II: Galaxy-Absorber Correlation Functions

Abstract

We use 211 galaxy spectra from our survey for Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) associated with 11 damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) to measure the three-dimensional LBG auto-correlation and DLA-LBG cross-correlation functions with the primary goal of inferring the mass of DLAs at z~3. Conventional binning of the data while varying both r_0 and gamma parameters of the fiducial model of the correlation function xi(r)=(r/r_0)^{-gamma} resulted in the best fit values and 1 sigma uncertainties of r_0=2.65+/-0.48, gamma=1.55+/-0.40 for the LBG auto-correlation and r_0=3.32+/-1.25, gamma=1.74+/-0.36 for DLA-LBG cross-correlation function. To circumvent shortcomings found in binning small datasets, we perform a maximum likelihood analysis based on Poisson statistics. The best fit values and 1 sigma confidence levels from this analysis were found to be r_0=2.91(+1.0,-1.0), gamma=1.21(+0.6,-0.3) for the LBG auto-correlation and r_0=2.81(+1.4,-2.0), gamma=2.11(+1.3,-1.4) for the DLA-LBG cross-correlation function. We report a redshift spike of five LBGs with Delta z = 0.015 of the z=2.936 DLA in the PSS0808+5215 field and find that the DLA-LBG clustering signal survives when omitting this field from the analysis. Using the correlation functions measurements and uncertainties, we compute the z~3 LBG galaxy bias b_LBG to be 1.5<b_LBG<3 corresponding to an average halo mass of 10^(9.7)<M_LBG<10^(11.6) M_odot and the z~3 DLA galaxy bias b_DLA to be 1.3<b_DLA<4 corresponding to an average halo mass of 10^(9)<M_LBG<10^(12) M_odot. Lastly, two of the six QSOs discovered in this survey were found to lie within Delta z = 0.0125 of two of the survey DLAs. We estimate the probability of this occurring by chance is 1 in 940 and may indicate a possible relationship between the distribution of QSOs and DLAs at z~3.

arXiv comment44 pages, 12 figures, accepted to The Astrophysical Journal

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