Abstract
The extragalactic background light at far-infrared wavelengths1,2,3 comes from optically faint, dusty, star-forming galaxies in the Universe with star formation rates of a few hundred solar masses per year4. These faint, submillimetre galaxies are challenging to study individually because of the relatively poor spatial resolution of far-infrared telescopes5,6. Instead, their average properties can be studied using statistics such as the angular power spectrum of the background intensity variations7,8,9,10. A previous attempt11 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 model12. 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 Universe13, and is lower than that predicted by semi-analytical models for galaxy formation14.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Puget, J.-L. et al. Tentative detection of a cosmic far-infrared background with COBE. Astron. Astrophys. 308, L5–L8 (1996)
Fixsen, D. J., Dwek, E., Mather, J. C., Bennett, C. L. & Shafer, R. A. The spectrum of the extragalactic far-infrared background from the COBE FIRAS observations. Astrophys. J. 508, 123–128 (1998)
Dwek, E. et al. The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment Search for the cosmic infrared background. IV. Cosmological implications. Astrophys. J. 508, 106–122 (1998)
Hughes, D. et al. High-redshift star formation in the Hubble Deep Field revealed by a submillimetre-wavelength survey. Nature 394, 241–247 (1998)
Nguyen, H. T. et al. HerMES: the SPIRE confusion limit. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L5 (2010)
Hauser, M. G. & Dwek, E. The cosmic infrared background: measurements and implications. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 39, 249–307 (2001)
Amblard, A. & Cooray, A. Anisotropy studies of the unresolved far-infrared background. Astrophys. J. 670, 903–911 (2007)
Haiman, Z. & Knox, L. Correlations in the far-infrared background. Astrophys. J. 530, 124–132 (2000)
Knox, L., Cooray, A., Eisenstein, D. & Haiman, Z. Probing early structure formation with far-infrared background correlations. Astrophys. J. 550, 7–20 (2001)
Negrello, M. et al. Astrophysical and cosmological information from large-scale submillimetre surveys of extragalactic sources. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 377, 1557–1568 (2007)
Viero, M. P. et al. BLAST: correlations in the cosmic far-infrared background at 250, 350, and 500 μm reveal clustering of star-forming galaxies. Astrophys. J. 707, 1766–1778 (2009)
Cooray, A. & Sheth, R. Halo models of large scale structure. Phys. Rep. 372, 1–129 (2002)
Bouché, N. et al. The impact of cold gas accretion above a mass floor on galaxy scaling relations. Astrophys. J. 718, 1001–1018 (2010)
Gonzalez, J. E., Lacey, C. G., Baugh, C. M. & Frenk, C. S. The role of submillimetre galaxies in hierarchical galaxy formation. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.. (submitted); preprint at 〈http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0230〉 (2010)
Devlin, J. M. et al. Over half of the far-infrared background light comes from galaxies at z ≥ 1.2. Nature 458, 737–739 (2009)
Dole, H. et al. The cosmic infrared background resolved by Spitzer. Contributions of mid-infrared galaxies to the far-infrared background. Astron. Astrophys. 451, 417–429 (2006)
Marsden, G. et al. BLAST: resolving the cosmic submillimeter background. Astrophys. J. 707, 1729–1739 (2009)
Oliver, S. et al. HerMES: SPIRE galaxy number counts at 250, 350 and 500 microns. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L21 (2010)
Griffin, M. J. et al. The Herschel-SPIRE instrument and its in-flight performance. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L3 (2010)
Pilbratt, G. et al. Herschel Space Observatory – an ESA facility for far-infrared and submillimetre astronomy. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L1 (2010)
Swinyard, B. et al. In-flight calibration of the Herschel-SPIRE instrument. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L4 (2010)
Lagache, G. et al. Correlated anisotropies in the cosmic far-infrared background detected by the multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer: constraint on the bias. Astrophys. J. 665, L89–L92 (2007)
Schlegel, D. J., Finkbeiner, D. P. & Davis, M. Maps of dust infrared emission for use in estimation of reddening and cosmic microwave background radiation foregrounds. Astrophys. J. 500, 525–534 (1998)
Cooray, A. HerMES: halo occupation number and bias properties of dusty galaxies from angular clustering measurements. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L22 (2010)
Maddox, S. J. et al. Herschel ATLAS: the angular correlation function of submillimetre galaxies at high and low redshift. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L11 (2010)
Lagache, G., Dole, H. & Puget, J.-L. Modelling the infrared galaxy evolution using a phenomenological approach. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 338, 555–571 (2003)
Valiante, E. et al. A backward evolution model for infrared surveys: the role of AGN- and color-LTIR distributions. Astrophys. J. 701, 1814–1838 (2009)
Glenn, J. et al. HerMES: deep galaxy number counts from a P(D) fluctuation analysis of SPIRE Science Demonstration Phase observations. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 409, 109–121 (2010)
Amblard, A. et al. Herschel-ATLAS: dust temperature and redshift distribution of SPIRE and PACS detected sources using submillimetre colours. Astron. Astrophys. 518, L9 (2010)
Kennicutt, R. C., Jr Star formation in galaxies along the Hubble sequence. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 36, 189–232 (1998)
Acknowledgements
SPIRE has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by Cardiff University (UK) and including the University of Lethbridge (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA and LAM (France); IFSI and the University of Padua (Italy); IAC (Spain); Stockholm Observatory (Sweden); Imperial College London, RAL, UCL-MSSL, UKATC and the University of Sussex (UK); and Caltech/JPL, IPAC and the University of Colorado (USA). This development has been supported by national funding agencies: CSA (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, CNES and CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); MCINN (Spain); SNSB (Sweden); STFC (UK); and NASA (USA). We thank M. Viero for comments. A.A., A. Cooray, P.S., A.A.K., K.M.-W. and other US co-authors are supported by NASA funds for US participants in Herschel through an award from JPL.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
This paper represents the combined work of the HerMES collaboration, the SPIRE Instrument Team’s Extragalactic Survey, and has been extensively internally reviewed. A. Cooray planned the study, supervised the research work of A.A. and P.S., and wrote the draft version of this paper. A.A. performed the power spectrum measurements and P.S. interpreted those measurements with the halo model. All other co-authors of this paper contributed extensively and equally by their varied contributions to the SPIRE instrument, Herschel mission, analysis of SPIRE and HerMES data, planning of HerMES observations and scientific support of HerMES, and by commenting on this manuscript as part of an internal review process.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Additional information
The data presented in this paper are publicly available from the ESA/Herschel Science Archive (http://herschel.esac.esa.int) under the observational identifications 1342186108, 1342186109 and 1342185536. Derived products by the HerMES collaboration, such as source catalogues, will be released through HeDaM (http://hedam.oamp.fr/HerMES).
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
The file contains Supplementary Notes and Data, Supplementary Figures 1-13 with legends, Supplementary Tables 1-3 and additional references. (PDF 3048 kb)
PowerPoint slides
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Amblard, A., Cooray, A., Serra, P. et al. Submillimetre galaxies reside in dark matter haloes with masses greater than 3 × 1011 solar masses. Nature 470, 510–512 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09771
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09771
This article is cited by
-
The far-infrared spectroscopic surveyor (FIRSS)
Experimental Astronomy (2021)
-
Ultraviolet luminosity density of the universe during the epoch of reionization
Nature Communications (2015)
-
Near-infrared background anisotropies from diffuse intrahalo light of galaxies
Nature (2012)
-
First results from Planck observatory
Nature (2012)
-
Design of an Integrated Filterbank for DESHIMA: On-Chip Submillimeter Imaging Spectrograph Based on Superconducting Resonators
Journal of Low Temperature Physics (2012)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.
