The clustering of H β + [O III] and [O II] emitters since z ∼ 5: dependencies with line luminosity and stellar mass

Abstract

We investigate the clustering properties of ∼7000 H β + [O III] and [O II] narrowband-selected emitters at z ∼ 0.8–4.7 from the High-z Emission Line Survey. We find clustering lengths, r_0, of 1.5–4.0 h^(−1) Mpc and minimum dark matter halo masses of 10^(10.7–12.1) M⊙ for our z = 0.8–3.2 H β + [O III] emitters and r_0 ∼ 2.0–8.3 h^(−1) Mpc and halo masses of 10^(11.5–12.6) M⊙ for our z = 1.5–4.7 [O II] emitters. We find r_0 to strongly increase both with increasing line luminosity and redshift. By taking into account the evolution of the characteristic line luminosity, L⋆(z), and using our model predictions of halo mass given r_0, we find a strong, redshift-independent increasing trend between L/L⋆(z) and minimum halo mass. The faintest H β + [O III] emitters are found to reside in 10^(9.5) M⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 10^(13.0) M⊙ haloes. For [O II] emitters, the faintest emitters are found in 10^(10.5) M⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 10^(12.6) M⊙ haloes. A redshift-independent stellar mass dependency is also observed where the halo mass increases from 10^(11) to 10^(12.5) M⊙ for stellar masses of 10^(8.5) to 10^(11.5) M⊙, respectively. We investigate the interdependencies of these trends by repeating our analysis in a L_(line)−M_(star) grid space for our most populated samples (H β + [O III] z = 0.84 and [O II] z = 1.47) and find that the line luminosity dependency is stronger than the stellar mass dependency on halo mass. For L > L⋆ emitters at all epochs, we find a relatively flat trend with halo masses of 10^(12.5–13) M⊙, which may be due to quenching mechanisms in massive haloes that is consistent with a transitional halo mass predicted by models.

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