Submillimetre galaxies reside in dark matter haloes with masses greater than 3 × 10 11 solar masses

Alexandre Amblard (1) , Asantha Cooray (1, 2) , Paolo Serra (1) , B. Altieri (3) , V. Arumugam (4) , H. Aussel (5) , A. Blain (2) , J. Bock (2, 6) , A. Boselli (7) , V. Buat (7) , N. Castro-Rodríguez (8) , A. Cava (8) , P. Chanial (9) , E. Chapin (10) , D. L. Clements (9) , A. Conley (11) , L. Conversi (12) , C. D. Dowell (6) , E. Dwek (13) , S. Eales (14) , D. Elbaz (5) , D. Farrah (15) , A. Franceschini (16) , W. Gear (14) , J. Glenn (11) , M. Griffin (14) , M. Halpern (10) , E. Hatziminaoglou (6) , E. Ibar (17) , K. Isaak (14) , R. J. Ivison (17) , A. A. Khostovan (1) , Guilaine Lagache (18) , L. Levenson (2) , N. Lu (19) , S. Madden (5) , B. Maffei (20) , G. Mainetti (16) , L. Marchetti (16) , G. Marsden (10) , K. Mitchell-Wynne (1) , H. T. Nguyen (21) , B. O'Halloran (9) , S. J. Oliver (15) , A. Omont (22) , M. J. Page (9) , P. Panuzzo (5) , A. Papageorgiou (6) , C. P. Pearson (23) , I. Pérez-Fournon (8) , M. Pohlen (14) , N. Rangwala (11) , I. G. Roseboom (24) , M. Rowan-Robinson (9) , M. Sánchez Portal (3) , B. Schulz (19) , Douglas Scott (10) , N. Seymour (25) , D. L. Shupe (6) , A. J. Smith (24) , J. A. Stevens (26) , M. Symeonidis (25) , M. Trichas (9) , K. Tugwell (27) , M. Vaccari (16) , E. Valiante (10) , I. Valtchanov (3) , J. D. Vieira (6) , L. Vigroux (22) , L. Wang (28) , R. Ward (24) , Gavin Wright (17) , C. K. Xu (6) , M. Zemcov (19)

1 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Irvine]
2 Department of Astronomy
3 Herschel Science Centre
4 IfA - Institute for Astronomy [Edinburgh]
5 AIM (UMR_7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112) - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation
6 Computing and Mathematical Sciences [Pasadena]]
7 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
8 IAC - Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
9 Astrophysics Group
10 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Vancouver]
11 CASA - Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy [Boulder]
12 Herschel Science Center [Madrid]
13 Observational Cosmology Lab
14 School of Physics and Astronomy [Cardiff]
15 Astronomy Centre
16 Dipartimento di Astronomia [Padova]
17 UK ATC - UK Astronomy Technology Centre
18 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
19 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
20 School of Physics and Astronomy [Manchester]
21 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
22 IAP - Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
23 RAL Space - Space Science and Technology Department [Didcot]
24 Astronomy Centre
25 Space Science & Technology Department
26 Centre for Astrophysics Research [Hatfield]
27 MSSL - Mullard Space Science Laboratory
28 MOTIVATE - Imagerie et modélisation Vasculaires, Thoraciques et Cérébrales

The extragalactic background light at far-infrared wavelengths comes from optically faint, dusty, star-forming galaxies in the Universe with star formation rates of a few hundred solar masses per year. These faint, submillimetre galaxies are challenging to study individually because of the relatively poor spatial resolution of far-infrared telescopes. Instead, their average properties can be studied using statistics such as the angular power spectrum of the background intensity variations. A previous attempt at measuring this power spectrum resulted in the suggestion that the clustering amplitude is below the level computed with a simple ansatz based on a halo model. Here we report excess clustering over the linear prediction at arcminute angular scales in the power spectrum of brightness fluctuations at 250, 350 and 500 μm. From this excess, we find that submillimetre galaxies are located in dark matter haloes with a minimum mass, Mmin, such that log10[Mmin/M⊙] = at 350 μm, where M⊙ is the solar mass. This minimum dark matter halo mass corresponds to the most efficient mass scale for star formation in the Universe, and is lower than that predicted by semi-analytical models for galaxy formation

Domains: Physics [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Galactic Astrophysics [astro-ph.GA]; Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Galactic Astrophysics [astro-ph.GA]

Alexandre Amblard, Asantha Cooray, Paolo Serra, B. Altieri, V. Arumugam, et al.. Submillimetre galaxies reside in dark matter haloes with masses greater than 3 × 10 11 solar masses. Nature, 2011, 470 (7335), pp.510-512. ⟨10.1038/nature09771⟩. ⟨cea-00904021⟩