Clustering dependence on Lyα luminosity from MUSE surveys at 3 < z < 6

Abstract

We investigate the dependence of Lyα emitter (LAE) clustering on Lyα luminosity and connect the clustering properties of ≈L⋆ LAEs with those of much fainter ones, namely, ≈0.04L⋆. We use 1030 LAEs from the MUSE-Wide survey, 679 LAEs from MUSE-Deep, and 367 LAEs from the to-date deepest ever spectroscopic survey, the MUSE Extremely Deep Field. All objects have spectroscopic redshifts of 3 < z < 6 and cover a large dynamic range of Lyα luminosities: 40.15 < log(LLyα/erg s−1) < 43.35. We apply the Adelberger et al. K-estimator as the clustering statistic and fit the measurements with state-of-the-art halo occupation distribution (HOD) models. We find that the large-scale bias factor increases weakly with an increasing line luminosity. For the low-luminosity (log⟨LLyα/[erg s−1]⟩ = 41.22) and intermediate-luminosity (log⟨LLyα/[erg s−1]⟩ = 41.64) LAEs, we compute consistent bias factors blow = 2.43−0.15+0.15 and binterm. = 2.42−0.09+0.10, whereas for the high-luminosity (log⟨LLyα/[erg s−1]⟩ = 42.34) LAEs we calculated bhigh = 2.65−0.11+0.13. Consequently, high-luminosity LAEs occupy dark matter halos (DMHs) with typical masses of log(Mh/[h−1 M⊙]) = 11.09−0.09+0.10, while low-luminosity LAEs reside in halos of log(Mh/[h−1 M⊙]) = 10.77−0.15+0.13. The minimum masses to host one central LAE, Mmin, and (on average) one satellite LAE, M1, also vary with Lyα luminosity, growing from log(Mmin/[h−1M⊙]) = 10.3−0.3+0.2 and log(M1/[h−1 M⊙]) = 11.7−0.2+0.3 to log(Mmin/[h−1 M⊙]) = 10.7−0.3+0.2 and log(M1/[h−1 M⊙]) = 12.4−0.6+0.4 from low- to high-luminosity samples, respectively. The satellite fractions are ≲10% (≲20%) at 1σ (3σ) confidence level, supporting a scenario in which DMHs typically host one single LAE. We next bisected the three main samples into disjoint subsets to thoroughly explore the dependence of the clustering properties on LLyα. We report a strong (8σ) clustering dependence on Lyα luminosity, not accounting for cosmic variance effects, where the highest luminosity LAE subsample (log(LLyα/erg s−1) ≈ 42.53) clusters more strongly (bhighest = 3.13−0.15+0.08) and resides in more massive DMHs (log(Mh/[h−1M⊙] )= 11.43−0.10+0.04) than the lowest luminosity one (log(LLyα/erg s−1) ≈ 40.97), which presents a bias of blowest = 1.79−0.06+0.08 and occupies log(Mh/[h−1M⊙]) = 10.00−0.09+0.12 halos. We discuss the implications of these results for evolving Lyα luminosity functions, halo mass dependent Lyα escape fractions, and incomplete reionization signatures.