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# The Canada-France deep fields survey–II: Lyman-break galaxies and galaxy clustering at 𝑧∼3 Based on observations obtained at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) which is operated by the National Research Council of Canada, the Institut des Sciences de l’Univers (INSU) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Hawaii, and at the Cerro Tololo Inter–American Observatory and Mayall 4-meter Telescopes, divisions of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

## 1 Introduction

Surveys of the local Universe, such as the Two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) (Colless et al., 2001) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) (Stoughton et al., 2002), are now providing ever-more detailed pictures of the distribution of galaxies on scales of several hundred Mpc. We have a good paradigm of large-scale structure formation in which small fluctuations of matter density grow under the influence of gravity to form large-scale structures and galaxy halos. Furthermore perturbation theory and numerical simulations provide useful predictions which can be challenged against observations. Making some assumptions on how dark matter traces luminous objects at large scales, we can produce a picture of how galaxies are distributed on large scales locally which match observational data remarkably well.

However, predicting the evolution of clustering to higher redshift is still challenging. We may either attempt to construct a fully self-consistent model of galaxy formation which links the dark matter distribution and the luminous galaxies (e.g. Cole et al., 1994; Baugh et al., 1999) or, alternatively, to postulate a relationship between dark matter halos and luminous galaxies (the bias) and use this to predict the galaxy distribution (e.g. Matarrese et al., 1997; Mo et al., 1999). One simple version of this method has been to postulate a linear relationship between the galaxy density, $`\delta _0`$, and the dark matter one, $`\delta _m`$: $`b=\delta _0/\delta _m`$ , where $`b`$ is the bias parameter (Kaiser, 1984). However, until recently, comparing these models to available observations has not been straightforward. For example, angular clustering analyses (e.g. Roche et al., 1993; McCracken et al., 2000) are usually based on magnitude limited samples that typically contain a mixture of galaxy types within a range of redshifts and thus require additional information on the evolution of the galaxy population to allow us to draw meaningful conclusions about the evolution of galaxy clustering.

A much more powerful technique is to measure the clustering of galaxies isolated in different redshift intervals. Spectroscopic surveys, such as the Canada-France Redshift Survey (CFRS) (Lilly et al., 1995; Le Fèvre et al., 1996) and the Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology survey (CNOC) (Carlberg et al., 2000), allow us to directly measure the evolution of the galaxy correlation length $`r_0`$ as a function of redshift. Alternatively, the photometric redshift technique has enabled similar analyses up to fainter magnitudes and higher redshifts (e.g. Arnouts et al., 1999; Brunner et al., 2000; Arnouts et al., 2002). Although these various samples are subject to different selection effects and cosmic variance, the results on the clustering measurements agree in showing a general decline of the comoving correlation length $`r_0`$ with redshift from $`z0`$ to $`z1`$. While the clustering amplitude of the underlying dark matter is also expected to decrease with look-back time with a rate depending on the cosmological parameters, the above observations cover a too small redshift range to provide constraints on the evolution of galaxy clustering.

In the early 1990’s, several studies attempted to photometrically isolate high redshift ($`z3`$) galaxies using very deep $`U`$ band imaging (Guhathakurta et al., 1990; Steidel & Hamilton, 1993). The Lyman limit discontinuity in the emission light of these (star-forming) galaxies, combined with absorption by the intergalactic medium along the line of sight (Madau, 1995; Bershady et al., 1999) means these objects are expected to have extremely red $`(UB)`$ colours, and $`(VI)`$ colours about zero (Madau et al., 1996). However, it was the advent of 10-m telescopes which allowed the redshifts of these galaxies to be spectroscopically confirmed (Steidel et al., 1996b). Today, a thousand or so of these bright galaxies (i.e. those with $`LL^{}`$) have been spectroscopically confirmed at redshift $`z3`$ (Lyman-break galaxies – Steidel et al.1999), whereas previously only peculiar objects such as QSOs or radio-galaxies were known at this epoch.

The most recent works on $`z3`$ galaxies have focused on their physical properties: for example, Adelberger et al. (2003) investigated the cross-correlation between Lyman-break galaxies and the intergalactic medium whereas Shapley et al. (2003) studied their rest-frame UV spectroscopic properties. Properties of these objects at other wavelengths have also been investigated (Nandra et al., 2002; Webb et al., 2003).

More recently, the focus has shifted to replicating the selection of high-redshift objects using the drop-out technique at $`z4`$ and beyond (Steidel et al., 1999; Stevens & Lacy, 2001; Ouchi et al., 2001; Lehnert & Bremer, 2002).

Early studies of clustering measurements of Lyman-break galaxies selected photometrically (Giavalisco et al., 1998) and spectroscopically (Adelberger et al., 1998) indicated they have a correlation length of $`4h^1`$ Mpc, comparable to nearby massive galaxies ; a result confirmed by more recent studies (e.g. Adelberger et al.2003). Since the strength of clustering for dark matter is expected to continuously decrease towards higher redshifts, the high clustering amplitudes found at $`z3`$ implies that Lyman-break galaxies are biased tracers of the underlying dark matter distribution, and furthermore suggests that they form preferentially in massive dark matter halos. In the current theoretical paradigm, more massive objects, which form at rarer peaks in the underlying dark matter distribution, have clustering amplitudes much higher than those of less massive, less luminous galaxies (Kaiser, 1984; Bardeen et al., 1986). More recent analyses of these Lyman-break galaxies datasets focused on the dependence of clustering amplitude on apparent magnitude selection (Giavalisco & Dickinson, 2001) or the behaviour of the galaxy clustering at small angular scales (Porciani & Giavalisco, 2002). However, the angular scales probed are generally small, as these surveys consist of many non-contiguous fields each of which covers $`50`$ arcmin2. These samples generally contained too few objects to allow a reliable detection of clustering dependence on apparent magnitude or to place useful constraints on the slope of the galaxy correlation function. Furthermore there is also a large spread of measurements made at the same limiting magnitude suggesting the presence of systematic effects or cosmic variance in these surveys.

In this paper, the second in a series, we report new measurements of number counts and clustering properties of Lyman-break galaxies selected in the Canada-France Deep Fields survey (CFDF). The CFDF is a deep, wide-field multi-wavelength survey of four unconnected fields covering three of the CFRS fields. In McCracken et al. (2001), hereafter referred as Paper I, we described the global properties of the CFDF sample and presented measurements of the two-point galaxy correlation function $`\omega (\theta )`$ as a function of angular scale, limiting $`I_{AB}`$ magnitude and $`(VI)_{AB}`$ colour.

Our wide field optical imaging, combined with deep $`U`$ band imaging, covering $`0.65`$ deg2, allows us to construct the largest sample of photometrically selected Lyman-break galaxies to date. Using spectroscopic observations and simulated catalogues we demonstrate our selection criterion is robust and estimate the degree of contamination in our catalogues. Our three fields, each covering scales of $`28\mathrm{}`$ and separated widely on the sky, allow us to make a robust estimation of the effect of cosmic variance on our results. Additionally the large angular scale of each CFDF field allows us to probe comoving separation at least twice larger than previous works ($`9h^1`$ Mpc at redshift $`z3`$ for a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$).

This paper is organised as follows: in Section 2 we briefly describe the observations which comprise the CFDF survey; in Section 3 we outline how Lyman-break galaxies were selected in the CFDF, and present an estimate of the robustness of this selection; in Section 4 we present our clustering measurements of the CFDF Lyman-break sample; in Section 5 we compare these observations to a range of theoretical predictions, and present our interpretation. Finally, conclusions are summarised in Section 6. Unless stated otherwise, throughout this paper we use a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ to compute spatial quantities and we assume $`h=H_0/100`$ km.s-1.Mpc-1).

## 2 Observations, data reductions and catalogue preparation

### 2.1 Observations and data reductions

The CFDF survey comprises four separate $`28\mathrm{}\times 28\mathrm{}`$ fields; and for two and half of these fields we have complete $`UBVI`$ photometry. In total these fields cover $`0.65`$ deg2 and include the 03hr, 14hr and 22hr fields of the CFRS survey (Lilly et al., 1995). Lyman-break studies have already been carried out in several subareas of the CFDF-14hr (the “Groth strip”) and the CFDF-22hr fields by Steidel et al. (1999).

Full details of the CFDF $`BVI`$ observations and the data reduction procedures are given in Paper I. These observations were carried out using the University of Hawaii’s 64-megapixel mosaic camera (UH8K) at the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in a series of runs from 1996 to 1997. In Paper I we demonstrated that the $`I_{AB}`$ zero-point r.m.s magnitude variation across each UH8K pointing is $`0.04`$ magnitudes, and that our internal r.m.s. astrometric accuracy (between images taken in separate filters) is $`0.05^{\prime \prime }`$. This allows us to measure accurately galaxy colours by using the same aperture at the same $`(x,y)`$ position on stacks constructed from different filters without the needing to positionally match our catalogues.

The unthinned Loral-3 CCDs used in UH8K has very poor response blueward of $`4000`$Å. For this reason, separate $`U`$ band observations were carried out at the Cerro Tolo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and at the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) 4-m telescopes. The detectors used were TEK $`2048\times 2048`$ thinned CCDs with a pixel scale of $`0.42^{\prime \prime }`$ pixel-1. To cover each $`28\mathrm{}\times 28\mathrm{}`$ UH8K field, four separate pointings were required. Total integration per pointing was approximatively $`10`$ hours with 10 to 15 exposures. Within each pointing, the airmass varied between 1.0 and 1.6 and seeing ranged from 1.0′′ to 1.4′′. Reduction of these data followed the usual steps of bias and overscan removal followed by flat-fielding. Each exposure in each pointing was then stacked and scaled so that all have the same photometric zero-point. A coordinate transformation between each of the four sub-pointings and the CFDF $`I`$ band was then computed. These sub-pointings were then resampled using this transformation to the pixel scale of UH8K ($`0.205^{\prime \prime }`$pixel-1). Finally, each sub-pointing was coadded to make a single large mosaic covering the entire field of UH8K. The 14hr and 03hr fields consist of four separate $`U`$ band sub-pointings, whereas we have only two for the 22hr data.

### 2.2 Catalogue preparation

As described in Paper I, we prepared catalogues using the $`\chi ^2`$ technique outlined in Szalay et al. (1999). This method provides an optimal way for detecting faint objects in multi-colour space. We did not use this method for our 22hr data as the seeing differs greatly across the $`U`$ band images; 22hr $`U`$ band images are composed of two different pointings taken at CTIO, one has a seeing of 1.2′′ and the second 1.4′′. Application of the $`\chi ^2`$ technique would involve convolving all images in all bands to the worst seeing, which we would prefer to avoid. Instead, we use an object detection list generated from the $`I`$ band image and measure colours using apertures at these positions for the other four images. To account for the poorer seeing in these images we use a slightly larger aperture of $`4^{\prime \prime }`$ to measure galaxy colours; for the other fields we use an aperture of $`3^{\prime \prime }`$. As we will see later, the slightly different reduction procedures used for the 22hr field does not affect our clustering measurements. Throughout, galaxy magnitudes are measured using Kron (1980) total magnitudes (SExtractor parameter MAG\_AUTO, Bertin & Arnouts, 1996). Table 1 gives the central coordinates of the three fields and the limiting magnitudes in the different bands, taking into account the different aperture sizes and extraction methods used to prepare each catalogue.

Polygonal masks were created covering regions near bright stars, or with lower signal-to-noise, and objects inside these areas were rejected. The total area, after masking, is given in Table 2. As explained in Paper I (section 5.1), we have conducted extensive tests with both correlated and uncorrelated mock datasets to demonstrate that the masking procedure does not affect the estimated correlation amplitudes.

## 3 The sample of Lyman-break galaxies

### 3.1 Selecting Lyman-break galaxy candidates

Lyman-break candidates were selected by isolating the Lyman-break feature at $`912`$Å in a colour-colour diagram (Steidel & Hamilton, 1993). To define our selection box we examine the path of synthetic evolutionary tracks in the $`(UB)`$ vs $`(BI)`$ colour-colour space defined by the CFDF filter set. These tracks are derived from a set of spectral energy distribution templates (Bruzual & Charlot, 1993) assuming a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology.

Figure 1 illustrates the tracks used; each track represents a different combination of galaxy type, age, metallicities and reddening. Internal extinction is modelled using a relation appropriate for starburst galaxies (Calzetti et al., 1994). We have also included the Lyman absorption produced by the intergalactic medium following Madau (1995). Colours of field stars are estimated using the galactic model of Robin & Creze (1986) transformed to our instrumental system (magnitude errors are not include in this Figure).

Based on these considerations, we define our selection box as

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}\hfill 1.0& & (UB)_{AB},& & \\ \hfill 1.0& & (BI)_{AB}& & 2.0,\hfill \\ \hfill (BI)_{AB}+0.5& & (UB)_{AB},& & \\ & & (VI)_{AB}& & 1.0.\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
We estimate the redshift range of our Lyman-break sample to be $`2.9<z<3.5`$, quite close to the $`2.7<z<3.4`$ interval sampled by Steidel et al. (1996a).

The criterion $`(VI)_{AB}1.0`$ reduces contamination by stars and avoids contamination by elliptical galaxies $`z1.5`$. Additionally, we require that our Lyman-break candidates are detected in $`B`$, $`V`$ and $`I`$. Finally, all candidates are visually inspected in all five channels ($`UBVI`$ and the $`\chi ^2`$ detection image) before they are added to the source catalogue. About ten percent of the Lyman-break sources were rejected as spurious; these objects are typically detections on bad columns or other cosmetic defects which had not been removed by the masking process. Given the detection limits in $`U`$ and $`I`$ presented in Table 1, selecting Lyman-break galaxies to $`I_{AB}=24.5`$ is feasible for all our fields.

In Figure 2 we show the $`(UB)`$ vs $`(BI)`$ colour-colour diagram for galaxies with $`I_{AB}<24`$ in the 03hr field, with Lyman-break candidates identified using the selection box defined in Equation 1. Redshifts for three of these galaxies were spectroscopically confirmed ($`z=3.07,3.08`$ and $`3.27`$ respectively) with data taken at CFHT in November 1997 using the Multi-Object Spectrograph. These galaxies are plotted in Figure 2 as open stars. A spectrum of one of these galaxies is shown in Figure 3.

As we have limited spectroscopy on CFDF $`z3`$ galaxies, we have carried out extensive simulations, described in the Section 3.3, to ensure the robustness of our selection box. As we will see, these simulations allow us to quantify how much contamination we expect from stars and lower-redshift interlopers.

### 3.2 Source counts of Lyman-break galaxies

In Figure 4 we present our raw and corrected Lyman-break galaxy counts as a function of $`I_{AB}`$ magnitude (dotted and solid symbols). Table 2 presents the surface densities of our Lyman-break galaxy sample for a ranges of limiting magnitudes. In addition, we present counts from Metcalfe et al. (2001) and Steidel et al. (1999) samples of Lyman-break galaxies. The latter compilation contains a correction for contamination by stars and AGN estimated from spectroscopic observations.

To convert these $`_{AB}`$-selected observations to our $`I_{AB}`$ magnitudes, we estimate the mean colour of Lyman-break galaxies at redshift $`z3`$ to be $`(RI)_{AB}0.3`$. In making this transformation we assume that the colours of the Lyman-break population do not evolve with magnitude. Combining this with the conversion between $`_{AB}`$ and $`R_{AB}`$ given in Steidel & Hamilton (1993), we estimate that $`(I)_{AB}0.19`$.

At bright magnitudes, our counts are in good agreement with the literature compilation: however, at fainter bins $`24.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ they exceed the literature comparisons by a factor $`1.31.5`$. Essentially this is due to higher contamination in our sample. According to simulations (which we describe fully in Section 3.3) this contamination, arising from the shallower depth of our $`UBVI`$ data compared to Steidel et al.’s $`U_nG`$ data, amounts to $`30\%`$ in the faintest bins. Counts corrected for this contamination are indicated as the dotted symbols in Figure 4. After this correction our counts are in closer agreement with the literature.

We note that the dispersion in Lyman-break counts between our three fields is larger than one would expect based on purely Poissonian errors. We suggest several possible explanations for this dispersion. Firstly, Lyman-break galaxies are strongly clustered objects: at the magnitude limit of the survey, this clustering can produce count fluctuations of $`15\%`$. Secondly, the absolute photometric calibration between each of the three fields (which were all taken in different observing runs, in different seasons, and in some cases with different $`U`$ band imagers) differs by at worst $`0.1`$ magnitudes (although, as demonstrated in Figure 9 of Paper I, the field–to–field variation in galaxy counts is still very small).

How large an effect could a systematic error of $`0.1`$ magnitude have on the Lyman-break number counts? To address this question we have carried out a set of simulations in which a small, Gaussian error of $`\sigma =0.1`$ is added to each filter, i.e., new magnitudes are computed according to $`M^{}=M+\delta M`$. The number counts of galaxies falling in the selection box is recomputed at each iteration. From this experiment we find that magnitude errors of $`\sigma =0.1`$ can produce a fluctuation in Lyman-break counts of $`15\%`$. Adding the contribution from the clustered nature of Lyman-break galaxies, this leads to a total expected field-to-field fluctuation of $`20\%`$, large enough to explain the deviation between the 14hr and 22hr fields. We have examined the 03hr field in more detail, and we find that one quadrant has a $`50\%`$ higher density of Lyman-break candidates than the other three: if this quadrant is removed, the fluctuations between the 03hr field and the other two can be explained by the sources of errors listed above. The effect of this over-dense quadrant on $`\omega (\theta )`$ is to increase the amount of power at $`0.1^{}`$ scales but, as we will see in Section 4, at the scales we normally measure galaxy correlation amplitudes, the field-to-field variation in $`\omega (\theta )`$ is still less than the amplitude of the Poissonian error in $`\omega (\theta )`$.

### 3.3 Estimating the reliability of the CFDF Lyman-break selection box

To estimate the level of contamination by stars and interlopers (lower-redshift galaxies) and the fraction of Lyman-break galaxies which could be missed in our sample, we construct multi-colour mock catalogues which incorporate all the observational uncertainties.

We use the model111http://www.obs-besancon.fr/www/modele/ of Robin & Creze (1986) to generate our stellar catalogue at the galactic latitude of the 14hr field. The catalogue’s $`UBVI`$ Johnson-Cousins colours were transformed to our instrumental system and then convolved with a function describing the dependence of magnitude errors with magnitude for each passband. In Figure 1 star symbols show objects from this catalogue; for clarity, only stars with $`I_{AB}<20.0`$ and without magnitude errors are shown. Fainter objects occupy the same region in colour-colour space.

For the galaxy catalogues, we use the empirical approach developed by Arnouts et al. (2003, in preparation); the main components of which are as follows. To characterise the spectral energy distribution (SEDs) of galaxies, we use the four observed SEDs of Coleman et al. (1980) (corresponding to Elliptical, Sbc, Scd and Irregular local galaxy types), and two SEDs corresponding to star-forming galaxies with ages of 0.05 and 2 Gyrs. These SEDs were computed using the GISSEL model (Bruzual & Charlot, 1993) assuming solar metallicity, a Salpeter initial mass function and constant star formation rate. Following the approach adopted by Sawicki et al. (1997), we interpolated between the 6 original spectra to provide a finer grid of the spectral-type coverage producing a total number of 61 templates. We derive the density of objects for given magnitude and redshift interval using the luminosity function parameters from the $`R`$ band ESO-Sculptor Survey to $`z0.6`$. Galaxies are divided into three spectral classes: early, intermediate and late types (de Lapparent et al. 2002, in preparation). At higher redshift the luminosity function parameters have been adjusted in order to reproduce the observed redshift distributions of the CFRS (Crampton et al., 1995) and the North and South Hubble Deep Fields (HDF-N and -S) (Arnouts et al., 1999, 2002). We derive magnitudes in other passbands using these SEDs to compute the appropriate $`k`$correction. A model for the “observed” magnitudes is obtained by taking into account the luminosity profile of the galaxy and observational conditions (such as seeing and surface brightness limits) and computing the fraction of light lost according to the magnitude scheme employed. We derive photometric errors using the observed dependence of error with magnitude in each passband. This empirical method reproduces the main observables such as counts, colours and redshift distributions. Special attention is paid to the redshift distributions to ensure a reasonable description of the relative fraction of galaxies at low and high redshift which is the first step in quantifying how target selection in a colour-colour diagram can be subject to contamination effects.

In Table 3 we show the surface densities of all the simulated objects (computed for an area of $`1`$ deg2) and compare them to observations in the CFDF-14hr field. The total surface densities of objects found in the selection box from simulations and observations are close, reflecting our requirement that the models match observed redshift distributions. According to the simulations, the contamination by stars decreases from $`6\%`$ to $`3\%`$, while the contamination by galaxies outside our chosen redshift range increases from $`8\%`$ to $`25\%`$ for $`I_{AB}<23.5`$ to $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ respectively. Furthermore we find that the class of interlopers changes as a function of limiting magnitude. For $`I_{AB}<23.5`$, about $`70\%`$ of the galaxy interlopers are expected to be at $`z2`$ and the remaining at $`z<2`$. At $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ the situation is different, due to the larger uncertainties in the colours: about $`60\%`$ of interlopers are expected to be $`z<2`$ and a large part of the remainder ($`25\%`$) are at $`z2`$. In the following section we assess the reliability of these simulations by direct comparison with spectroscopic observations.

Our 14hr field covers the “Groth strip” field. C. Steidel has kindly provided us with spectroscopic redshifts for 335 photometrically selected objects in this area and we have used this dataset to assess the reliability of our selection box. There are 315 objects in common (based on a simple positional match) between the two catalogues, and for these objects, selected using $`U_nG`$ photometry, we have spectroscopic redshifts in addition to CFDF $`UBVI`$ photometry. Table 4 shows the redshift distribution for galaxies with $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ before and after the application of our selection box.

In total we retrieve $`59.6\%`$ (31/52) of galaxies at $`2.9<z<3.5`$ after applying our selection box. Given that the redshift distribution of the two samples is different (with mean redshifts of $`\overline{z}=3.04`$ and $`\overline{z}=3.2`$ respectively) this is to be expected, assuming the underlying distributions are Gaussian with the same dispersion.

Although the photometric selection of the Steidel et al. sample is different from ours, we can attempt to estimate the amount of contamination in our catalogue by galaxies outside our redshift range after the application of our selection box. Inside our selection box, galaxies at lower redshifts ($`2.0<z<2.9`$) amount to $`25\%`$ of the total. Spectroscopically identified stars account for a further $`3.8\%`$ of objects, in broad agreement with the results of our simulated catalogues. However, we note that the spectroscopic sample contains no objects with $`z<2`$, in disagreement with our simulations. Finally, $`9.6\%`$ of our candidates have no redshift.

Furthermore, the full spectroscopic catalogue, there are no objects with $`z<2`$; however, in $`18.5\%`$ candidates have no measured redshift. Determining redshifts for galaxies in the range $`1<z<2`$ is difficult, so it is possible some of these unidentified objects could be galaxies in this redshift range. But as the main fraction of these object simply have not been attempted yet, this couldn’t account for some of the $`17\%`$ of contamination by interlopers with redshift $`z<2`$ indicated by our simulations at $`I_{AB}<24.5`$.

Although our $`U`$ data is approximately as deep as Steidel et al.’s, our $`BI`$ data is somewhat shallower than their $`G`$ images. For example, detection limits of the Steidel et al. data are approximately $`(U_nGR)_{AB}27.3,27.3,26.8`$ (Adelberger et al., 2003) compared CFDF limits of $`(UBVI)_{AB}=27.0,26.4,26.4,25.6`$ ($`3\sigma `$ limits, $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ diameter aperture, 03hr field; see paper I for more details). At fainter magnitudes the shallowness of our $`B`$ images is expected to increase our contamination by lower-redshift galaxies. This can explain the discrepancy between our raw number counts and the number counts of Steidel et al. as shown in Figure 4, and the fact that they are in good agreement after correction from contamination in our sample.

In summary, we estimate that our sample is contaminated at the level of $`15\%`$ to $`30\%`$ between $`I_{AB}<23.5`$ and $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ respectively. Our selection box allows us to recover a large fraction of simulated Lyman-break galaxies, ranging from $`95\%`$ to $`80\%`$ between $`I_{AB}<23.5`$ and $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ respectively. Comparisons with a large sample of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts (preselected, however, using a different photometric criterion from ours) indicate we recover, in this case, $`60\%`$ of the Lyman-break galaxies. We attribute this discrepancy to the different underlying redshift distributions for the two photometrically selected samples.

## 4 Clustering of the Lyman-break galaxies

### 4.1 Estimating $`\omega (\theta )`$ and $`A_\omega `$

To measure $`\omega (\theta )`$, the two-point projected galaxy correlation function, we use the Landy & Szalay (1993) estimator,

$$\omega (\theta )=\frac{\text{DD}2\text{DR}+\text{RR}}{\text{RR}},$$
(2)
where the DD, DR and RR terms refer to the number of data-data, data-random and random-random galaxy pairs having angular separations between $`\theta `$ and $`\theta +\delta \theta `$.

In the weak clustering regime this estimator has a nearly Poissonian variance (Landy & Szalay, 1993),

$$\delta \omega (\theta )=\sqrt{\frac{1+\omega (\theta )}{\text{DD}}}.$$
(3)
Section 4.6 addresses the reliability of this error measurement for our present dataset. To determine $`A_\omega `$, the amplitude of $`\omega (\theta )`$ at 1 degree, we assume that $`\omega (\theta )`$ is well represented by a power-law of slope $`\delta `$, i.e. $`\omega (\theta )=A_\omega \theta ^\delta `$ (Groth & Peebles, 1977). In what follows, we assume $`\delta =0.8`$; in Section 4.2 we explore this assumption in more detail. This fitted amplitude must be adjusted to take into account the “integral constraint” correction, which arises from the fact that the mean background density of galaxies is estimated from the sample itself. We estimate this term as follows (Roche et al., 1993),

$$C=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}\omega (\theta )𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_1𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_2,$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the area subtended by the survey field. To determine $`C`$ we numerically integrate this expression over each field, excluding masked regions. We find $`C4.2A_\omega `$ for the 14hr and 03hr fields. For the 22hr field, which has half the coverage, we derive $`C5.5A_\omega `$. Then we determine $`A_\omega `$ fitting the expression:

$$\omega _{obs}(\theta )=A_\omega \theta ^\delta C.$$
(5)
Figure 5 shows the angular correlation function, $`\omega (\theta )`$, as a function of the angular separation in degrees for Lyman-break galaxies with $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ in the CFDF-14hr field. Here the errorbars have been estimated with the normal Poisson errors (Equation 3). The fitted amplitude derived from Equation 5 is represented by the solid line. The long dashed line shows the $`A_\omega `$ value computed from the CFDF field galaxy sample at the same limiting magnitude (from Paper I). The $`A_\omega `$ for the Lyman-break sample is $`10`$ higher than the field galaxy sample. In Table 5 we summarise our Lyman-break $`A_\omega `$ measurements for a range of limiting magnitudes in the CFDF.

In Figure 5 we compare our measurements of $`\omega (\theta )`$ to those of Giavalisco et al. (1998). As the largest CFDF fields are $`9`$ times larger than those used in this study, our measurements of $`\omega (\theta )`$ cover a much larger range of angular separations. We note that our amplitude measurements are $`2`$ times larger those of Giavalisco et al.; we expect this arises from the greater depth of the Giavalisco et al. study compared to the CFDF. To test that the origin of this discrepancy in amplitude did not arise from inhomogeneities within our fields, we extracted, from each CFDF field, sub-fields covering the same $`9^{}\times 9^{}`$ area as subtended by the Giavalisco et al. work. In total we extracted 21 fields of these dimensions. We fitted each sub-field individually and found a median correlation amplitude over all fields of $`(6.9\pm 5.1)\times 10^3`$, which is in good agreement with the full field value of $`(7.4\pm 1.0)\times 10^3`$ quoted in Table 5. The results of this test are consistent with the simulations carried out in paper I in which we demonstrated that measurements of $`\omega (\theta )`$ for $`I_{AB}`$ limited samples in the CFDF are unaffected by sensitivity variations across the mosaics to at least $`I_{AB}25`$. Finally, we also note that our measurements of $`\omega (\theta )`$ follow a power-law behaviour over the entire range $`0.001^{}<\theta <0.02^{}`$ accessible to our survey and there is no evidence of an excess of power on large scales (with the exception of the 03hr field), as one might expect if residual inhomogeneities existed within individual field.

We also measured $`\omega (\theta )`$ in four separate sub-areas on each of our three fields. Each sub-areas corresponds to the size of the individual $`U`$-band pointings. In each sub-area we measure $`\omega (\theta )`$ separately and then determine the mean and the variance: this is illustrated in Figure 6. Measuring $`\omega (\theta )`$ is these sub-areas is more challenging as the numbers of galaxies involved is much smaller. However, the fitted amplitudes in each of these sub-areas agrees very well with the full-field values presented in Table 5.

### 4.2 Measuring the slope

Is the slope of the $`\omega (\theta )`$ for Lyman-break galaxies really $`\delta =0.8`$? In earlier works (Adelberger et al., 1998; Arnouts et al., 1999), a value of $`\delta =0.8`$ was used based on results from local large surveys (Groth & Peebles, 1977). In contrast, Giavalisco et al. (1998) measured $`\delta =1.0\pm 0.3`$. The large angular coverage of the CFDF fields allow estimate $`\delta `$; in Figure 5, we can easily detect power in $`\omega (\theta )`$ to scales of $`0.1^{}`$, making it possible to place constraints on the joint values of $`A_\omega `$ and $`\delta `$.

To estimate the best-fitting values of $`A_\omega `$ and $`\delta `$ we carry out a $`\chi ^2`$ minimisation on the values of $`\omega (\theta )`$ determined for all fields, similar to that described in Paper I. This computation accounts for the dependence of the integral constraint $`C`$ with the slope $`\delta `$. Figure 7 shows the fit for two of our three fields; our data provides an approximate constraint on $`\delta `$. We find the mean of the best fitted slopes is $`\delta =0.81_{0.24}^{+0.21}`$ for the CFDF-14hr field and $`\delta =0.81_{0.35}^{+0.25}`$ for the CFDF-22hr field for $`I_{AB}<24.5`$ (we were not able to fit simultaneously both for the slope and amplitude on the CFDF-03hr field).

To summarise, our clustering measurements are broadly consistent with a power-law of slope $`\delta 0.8`$ over all the magnitude ranges accessible to our survey. Our data do not provide any strong evidence for slopes shallower or steeper than this value, as suggested by other authors (Giavalisco & Dickinson, 2001; Adelberger et al., 2003).

### 4.3 The comoving correlation length $`r_0`$

We use the spatial correlation function (Groth & Peebles, 1977), to derive $`r_0`$, the comoving galaxy correlation length based on our angular clustering measurements, given by

$$\xi (r,z)=\left(\frac{r}{r_0(z)}\right)^\gamma ,$$
(6)
where $`\gamma =1+\delta `$. The redshift dependence is included in the comoving correlation length $`r_0(z)`$.

Using the relativistic Limber equation (Peebles, 1980; Magliocchetti & Maddox, 1999), we can derive the correlation length $`r_0`$ from the correlation amplitude $`A_\omega `$, providing we can estimate a redshift distribution for our sources. In what follows we assume that our Lyman-break redshift distribution is well described by a top-hat function spanning the interval $`2.9<z<3.5`$; however, our results are unchanged if we use a Gaussian redshift distribution covering the same interval.

Could our adopted redshift distribution be modified by the presence of interlopers? Assuming a Gaussian distribution of Lyman-break galaxies centred on $`2.9<z<3.5`$ with $`\overline{z}=3.2`$ and $`\sigma _z=0.3`$, we estimate in the following manner the effect that $`30\%`$ of contamination on $`\overline{z}`$: first, we assume the redshift distribution of the interlopers is also a Gaussian with $`\overline{z}=2.5`$ and $`\sigma _z=0.3`$. Next, adding $`30\%`$ of these object to our reference distribution we find $`\overline{z}=3.0`$ with $`\sigma _z=0.4`$, i.e. a variation of $`5\%`$. Interlopers at lower redshifts, $`\overline{z}=1.8`$ and $`\sigma _z=0.3`$ produce a $`10\%`$ variation in $`\overline{z}`$. These numbers are unchanged if instead we assume top-hat interloper distribution. Based on this discussion we adopt a $`10\%`$ as upper limit of to our uncertainty in $`\overline{z}`$.

In Table 5 we present the values of the comoving correlation length $`r_0`$ of Lyman-break galaxies with $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$. If we incorporate the uncertainty in $`\overline{z}`$ outlined above, an extra error of $`\pm 0.2`$ for the samples with $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$, and of $`\pm 0.4`$ for $`20.0<I_{AB}<23.5`$ must be added. Results are shown for three cosmologies: Einstein-DeSitter ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1.0,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.0`$), open ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.2,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.0`$) and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$). We present correlation lengths computed for each field and for the mean of the three fields. We also show the results for two-parameter fits (slope and amplitude) for the 14hr and 22hr fields, and also for a fixed slope $`\delta =0.8`$ for the 03hr field and for the mean of all fields. Errors were computed using the Poissonian statistics (Equation 3).

We note that our two-parameter fits for $`r_0`$ and slope are not consistent with those of Adelberger et al. (2003) ($`r_0=(4.0\pm 0.3)h^1`$ Mpc and $`\delta =0.55\pm 0.15`$); these measurements fall outside the error ellipses plotted in Figure 7. Two phenomena could explain this discrepancy: firstly the sample of Adelberger et al. is slightly fainter than ours (which could produce a shift of the contour in Figure 7 to the right – see Section 4.4) and secondly their sample is a spectroscopic one and is expected to have a lower level of contamination than ours.

To summarise, for a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology, and for $`\delta =0.8`$, we derive for the full $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ sample $`r_0=(5.9\pm 0.5)h^1`$ Mpc, averaged over all three fields. For the two-parameter fits, we find $`r_0=(5.3_{2.2}^{+6.8})h^1`$ Mpc with $`\delta =0.81_{0.24}^{+0.21}`$ and $`r_0=(6.3_{2.8}^{+17.9})h^1`$ Mpc with $`\delta =0.81_{0.35}^{+0.25}`$ respectively.

### 4.4 Possible dependence on apparent magnitude of the correlation amplitude and length

In the 14hr field, our $`r_0`$ measurements indicate samples with fainter limits magnitudes have lower values of $`r_0`$. Comparing our brightest $`20.0<I_{AB}<23.5`$ and our faintest $`23.5<I_{AB}<24.5`$ samples, we detect this effect with a $`3\sigma `$ confidence, as shown in the Figure 8. For these two sub-samples we also find approximately the same values of the slope. In Table 5, we show the values of the correlation amplitude and length for the two magnitude-limited samples, with the slope fixed to $`\delta =0.8`$ and not fixed.

We note that this dependence of clustering strength with luminosity is also observed at lower redshifts (Norberg et al., 2002; Budavari et al., 2003). Moreover, recent results from the SDSS (Budavari et al., 2003) demonstrate that the slope of galaxy correlation function is independent of galaxy absolute luminosity, consistent with our observations.

### 4.5 Effect of contaminants on $`A_\omega `$ and $`r_0`$

To estimate the effect the contaminating population has on our measurements of $`r_0`$ and $`A_\omega `$, we must make some assumptions of their clustering properties. In the case of the stellar contaminants, this is easy; however, for the interloper population it is less clear. Our selection criterion of $`(VI)<1`$ eliminates $`z1.5`$ bright ellipticals which might produce spuriously high correlations (additionally, we find no trend in our samples of $`(VI)`$ with $`I_{AB}`$ magnitude). Moreover, our simulations indicate that most of the interloper population lies at $`z2`$.

Assuming all the contaminants are unclustered, we can derive upper limits of the effect on the clustering. We find a fraction of contamination (by lower-redshift interlopers and stars) of $`f0.15`$ for $`20<I_{AB}<23.5`$ and $`f0.3`$ for the fainter $`20<I_{AB}<24.5`$ (Section 3.3). If these objects are not clustered, the estimates of clustering amplitudes $`A_\omega `$, assuming a fixed slope of $`\delta =0.8`$, have to be readjusted by a factor $`1/(1f)^21.38`$ for the brighter sample and $`1/(1f)^22.04`$ for the fainter one. This implies factors of $`1.20`$ and $`1.49`$ respectively for the correlation lengths $`r_0`$ for bright and faint samples (in our fainter magnitude bins, the interloper population is composed primarily of galaxies, which are more strongly clustered than stars but less strongly clustered than the Lyman-break population; this may further reduce the factor of 1.49).

An empirical way to estimate the effect of the contamination on our measurements is to replace a fraction of our candidates by objects extracted from the whole catalogue. We carried out this exercise for the 14hr field by replacing 30% of the objects with $`20<I_{AB}<24.5`$ and 15% for $`20<I_{AB}<23.5`$, computing clustering with a slope of $`\delta =0.8`$ and for a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology. In the first case we find $`r_0=(10.3\pm 2.2)h^1`$ Mpc, i.e. a factor of $`1.13`$ times lower, and in the second case $`r_0=(4.1\pm 0.5)h^1`$ Mpc, i.e. a factor of $`1.22`$ times lower. Of course in this experiment we cannot control the nature of the contaminants but these results indicate that this level of contamination could not produce the $`3\sigma `$ segregation effect reported in section 4.4.

### 4.6 Are Poisson errors appropriate for the Landy and Szalay estimator?

In this section we investigate if the errors in the Landy and Szalay estimator (Equation 3) can be reliably described by Poissonian statistics. In doing this, we neglect other contributions, such as the finite size of the survey and the clustered nature of the galaxy distribution. We estimate here the relative amount of the various contributions to the error budget, using the analytical expression derived by Bernstein (1994). This expression has three terms: one reflecting the finite volume error ($`E_1`$: “cosmic variance”), which is independent of the number of galaxies, and two others related to the discrete nature of the galaxy catalogue: the first one appears only in the case of correlated sets of points ($`E_2`$, which cancels if $`\omega 0`$) and the second one includes the pure Poisson error ($`E_3`$). The calculation of the cosmic error requires prior knowledge of higher-order statistics ($`S_3`$ and $`S_4`$) as well as their redshift behaviours. We follow the recipes described in Colombi et al. (2000) and Arnouts et al. (2002) to perform this computation. Of course our total error budget will be dominated by the effects of systematic errors arising from our imperfect knowledge of the source redshift distribution and the precise quantity of contaminants in our sample, as we have discussed extensively elsewhere in our paper.

In Figure 9 we show the relative magnitudes of the three components $`E_1^{1/2}`$ (short-long dashed lines), $`E_2^{1/2}`$ (short dashed lines) and $`E_3^{1/2}`$ (long-dashed lines) and the total error ($`E^{1/2}=\sqrt{E_1+E_2+E_3}`$, solid lines) as a function of the angular scale, $`\theta `$, for three limiting magnitudes. The results are shown for the “$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM bias model” described in Arnouts et al. (2002). The bias values used in this analysis for the different samples are given in Table 5. The theoretical estimates are compared to the observed errors of the CFDF-14hr field ($`\delta \omega /\omega _{fit}`$).

The behaviour of the observed errors matches closely the Poisson term $`E_3`$ at all angular scales for each of the three magnitude limited samples. At $`\theta 0.02^{}`$, $`E_3`$ dominates the total error. The contribution of the finite volume error $`E_1`$ starts to play a significant role at relatively large scales: $`0.04^{}\theta 0.1^{}`$. The contribution of $`E_2`$ is never dominant at any scale. For $`0.001^{}<\theta <0.02^{}`$, our analysis shows that the total cosmic error ($`E`$) is dominated by Poisson noise ($`E_3`$) and the amplitude of $`E(\theta 0.02^{})^{1/2}`$ is not more than a factor 1.6 larger than the amplitude of $`E_3^{1/2}`$. This result justifies the choice of using the nearly Poissonian errors.

## 5 Discussion and comparison with theory

### 5.1 Introduction

In this section we compare our measurements of the galaxy correlation length $`r_0`$ (in $`h^1`$ Mpc) with those of other authors and we interpret these derived values in terms of several simple models. Throughout this section, unless stated otherwise, all measurements of $`r_0`$ are presented for a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$). When necessary, we transform measurements from other authors to this cosmology using the equations presented in Magliocchetti et al. (2000). As we have already demonstrated in section 4.2, our measured slopes are consistent with $`\delta =0.8`$; to comparing our results with literature measurements and models, we use this corresponding value of the slope.

### 5.2 Tracing the evolution of $`r_0`$ with redshift

In Figure 10, we plot the comoving correlation length $`r_0`$ of Lyman-break galaxies in the CFDF. The filled circle shows the mean measurement for all fields, for $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$; the filled square and filled triangle shows measurements at $`20.0<I_{AB}<23.5`$ and $`23.5<I_{AB}<24.5`$ respectively for the CFDF-14hr field. These measurements are shown at the mean assumed redshift of the CFDF Lyman-break sample $`\overline{z}=3.2`$. For clarity each of the samples is slightly offset from each other. In addition, the dotted line on the right of this Figure represents the errorbar for the CFDF-14hr $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ sample when both $`\delta `$ and the amplitude are fitted, and corresponds to a projection of the $`1\sigma `$ contour plot shown in Figure 7 along the amplitude axis.

For comparison we also show $`r_0`$ measurements for the local Universe from the Stromlo-APM survey (Loveday et al., 1995). Clustering measurements from the $`I_{AB}<22.5`$ selected CFRS and the CNOC absolute magnitude-limited $`M_R^{k,e}<20`$ surveys provide measurements of the evolution of clustering to $`z<1`$ (Le Fèvre et al., 1996; Carlberg et al., 2000). We also show an average of measurements based on photometric redshift studies of the HDF-N and -S (Arnouts et al., 1999, 2002); galaxies in this study have $`I_{AB}28`$ (clustering measurements at $`z4`$ from this study are not shown because of the very small numbers of galaxies in this redshift bin). Finally, correlation length derived for $`z3.8`$ galaxies with $`i_{AB}^{}26`$ in the Subaru deep field (Ouchi et al., 2001) is shown.

A comparison of previous clustering measurements of Lyman-break galaxies are also presented. We note that in the literature there are several different analyses of the same dataset or supersets of the same dataset (either the HDF fields or the fields analysed by Steidel and collaborators). The open stars show measurements from Adelberger et al. (2003), who fit for both slope and amplitude; the Adelberger et al. (1998) measurement was carried out on a subsample of this, with the slope fixed to $`\delta =0.8`$ (for clarity those measurements were slightly offset). The three open circles show the clustering measurements from Giavalisco & Dickinson (2001); the upper circle represents their $`r_0`$ measurement from a $`_{AB}25.1`$ spectroscopically selected sample of Lyman-break galaxies (their “SPEC” sample), another subset of the Adelberger et al. (2003) sample. The middle open circle is the Giavalisco & Dickinson $`_{AB}<25.5`$ photometrically selected Lyman-break sample (the “PHOT” sample), and the lower circle is Giavalisco & Dickinson’s measurement of Lyman-break galaxies with $`V_{AB\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}606}}<27`$ in the HDF. We caution that the Giavalisco & Dickinson use a slope of $`\delta 1.2`$, different from this work. This explains the discrepancy between the HDF clustering measurement by Giavalisco & Dickinson and that of average HDF-N and -S values from Arnouts et al., who computed fitted correlation quantities assuming $`\delta =0.8`$.

Figure 10 also shows “$`ϵ`$-model” predictions, i.e, $`r_0(z)=r_0(z=0)(1+z)^{(3+ϵ\gamma )/\gamma }`$, for different values of $`ϵ`$, scaled arbitrarily to the value of $`r_0=4.3h^1`$ Mpc at redshift $`z=0`$ (Groth & Peebles, 1977). In this simple prescription, three values of $`ϵ`$ are normally considered: $`ϵ=1.2`$ for a slope $`\gamma =1.8`$, corresponding to clustering fixed in comoving coordinates; $`ϵ=0`$, representing clustering fixed in proper coordinates; and $`ϵ=0.8`$ which corresponds to the predictions of linear theory, for an Einstein-DeSitter cosmology.

Taken together, these measurements present no clear picture of how $`r_0`$ evolves with redshift; for the CNOC survey, it appears that clustering is approximately fixed in comoving coordinates up to $`z0.6`$, whereas the results of the CFRS study indicate $`r_0`$ declines to $`z1`$. The HDF $`r_0`$ measurements appear to increase gradually over the entire redshift interval shown in our graph, and are always below the high-redshift values estimated from the CFDF. A number of separate factors contribute to this disparity: firstly, as we have highlighted, each individual sample has a different selection criterion; for example, galaxies at $`z<1`$ from the HDF samples are much fainter and less numerous than those selected in the CFRS survey. It is clear from local spectroscopic surveys that galaxy clustering is a sensitive function of spectral type and intrinsic luminosity (Loveday et al., 1995, 1999; Norberg et al., 2002). Secondly, the field of view and the comoving scales probed are very different between each survey. At $`z1`$, for example, the HDF probes only $`1h^1`$ Mpc, and this comoving scale increases at higher redshifts. Lastly, all surveys are subject to sampling and cosmic variance effects.

Precisely because of the effects outlined above it is difficult to directly compare our measurements of $`r_0`$ for Lyman-break galaxies to those of other authors. As mentioned previously, an additional uncertainty is that not all authors adopt the same value of the slope $`\delta `$, although the strong covariance between $`A_\omega `$ and $`\delta `$ allows us to estimate approximately the effect a changing slope will have on the fitted amplitude (see Figure 7). Furthermore, all previous measurements of clustering at high redshift, based on photometric samples such as ours, are for fainter magnitudes than the faintest CFDF sample. Given the observed segregation of clustering amplitude with apparent magnitude observed in the CFDF-14hr field, we would expect these previous studies to measure a lower amplitude than our work, and this is indeed what is observed. The photometric sample of Giavalisco & Dickinson (2001), reaching a half-magnitude fainter than our faintest sample, displays a clustering amplitude approximately twice as low as our faintest bin. However, the spectroscopic Lyman-break samples of Adelberger et al. (1998) and Giavalisco & Dickinson (2001) have approximately the same magnitude limits as our work, and we agree quite well with these measurements.

### 5.3 The surface density dependence of $`r_0`$

In this Section we discuss the dependence of $`r_0`$ with galaxy surface density, a relationship which is more amenable to direct modelling, and discuss in more detail the implications of the segregation of galaxy clustering with apparent magnitude.

Figure 11 shows the comoving correlation length $`r_0`$ as a function of surface density for two magnitude limited samples ($`20.0<I_{AB}<23.5`$ and $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$) extracted from the CFDF-14hr and averaged over all three CFDF fields respectively. Error bars are computed using Poisson statistics. We added two clustering measurement of Lyman-break galaxies taken from the literature: Adelberger et al. (1998), and the average of two measurements for Lyman-break galaxies photometrically selected in the HDF-N and -S (Arnouts et al., 1999, 2002) (here we only show measurements of $`r_0`$ computed assuming a slope $`\gamma =1.8`$). At densities of $`1`$ arcmin-2 our $`r_0`$ measurements are in excellent agreement with those of Adelberger et al.. Moreover, our measurements show a trend of increasing correlation length with decreasing galaxy surface density.

As an attempt to interpret these results, we consider the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-CDM analytic model of structure evolution presented in Arnouts et al. (1999) and discussed fully in Matarrese et al. (1997) and Moscardini et al. (1998) (their “transient” model). The relevant cosmological parameters for this model are given in Table 6 of Moscardini et al.’s paper. Similar models have also been presented elsewhere (Mo & White, 1996; Mo et al., 1999). In this model, each Lyman-break galaxy is associated with one dark matter halo.

To briefly summarise the model’s main components, we assume that the clustering of galaxies $`\xi _g(r,z)`$ is linearly related to the dark matter clustering $`\xi _m(r,z)`$ through the linear effective bias $`b_{eff}^2(z)`$. The dark matter clustering is computed in the non-linear regime occupied by our survey using the fitting formulae of Peacock & Dodds (1996) and a power spectrum normalised to correctly reproduce the present-day abundance of bright clusters. The effective bias is calculated by integrating the product of the bias parameter $`b(M,z)`$ and the Press & Schechter (1974) dark matter halo redshift-mass distribution function over all the masses of halos larger than a typical minimum mass. To improve accuracy, the models use the fitting formulae of Sheth & Tormen (1999) for these quantities based on halos identified in a large N-body simulation. This model is shown as the solid line in Figure 11.

Despite its simplicity, this model reproduces quite well the observed strong dependence of $`r_0`$ on Lyman-break surface density seen in the CFDF survey, and this agreement continues to very faint $`I_{AB}=28`$ measurements at surface densities of $`40`$ arcmin-2 from the combined HDF measurement. Previously, such a dependence had not been unambiguously detected within a given survey.

These results argue against models of Lyman-break galaxy clustering such as the “bursting” scenario proposed by Kolatt et al. (1999), in which Lyman-break galaxies become visible as a result of stochastic star-formation activity. These models have difficulty in reproducing the strong dependence of galaxy clustering on surface density observed in our survey.

In the framework of biased galaxy formation, our results are consistent with a picture where more biased galaxies are more luminous and inhabit more massive dark matter halos with a simple one-to-one correspondence. A simple way to explain this relationship could be that there is a direct link between the luminosity of the galaxies and the mass of the halo. As the magnitudes we are measuring correspond to the rest-frame ultraviolet luminosity and as we assume here there is only one galaxy per halo, the most natural explanation of this relationship could be a direct link between the stellar masses of the Lyman-break galaxy population and the rest frame ultraviolet luminosity (Papovich et al., 2001). However, stellar population synthesis modelling of Lyman-break galaxies population has failed to definitively establish such a relationship: as suggested by Shapley et al. (2001) these models are dependent on the assumed extinction law, which is currently unknown for Lyman-break galaxies.

How realistic is our assumption that each Lyman-break galaxy traces exactly one dark-matter halo? Applying semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to the clustering of Lyman-break galaxies, Baugh et al. (1999) found that, at higher redshifts, these models gave almost identical clustering amplitudes to these simpler “massive halo models”. However, a more important question is how this clustering strength scales with halo abundance. More recent work has shown how the halo occupation function – the number of objects per halo – affects sensitively the slope of the model curve in Figure 11 (Wechsler et al., 2001; Bullock et al., 2002). Models in which many Lyman-break galaxies inhabit a single halo show a weak dependence of clustering strength with object abundance and have difficulty reproducing the strong trend seen in our data.

It is also interesting to investigate the small-scale behaviour of $`\omega (\theta )`$ which can provide information on the halo occupation function (Bullock et al., 2002). It has been claimed that at small ($`\theta <10^{\prime \prime }`$) separations $`\omega (\theta )`$ no longer follows a power law (Porciani & Giavalisco, 2002). For the full $`20<I_{AB}<24.5`$ CFDF Lyman-break sample we have computed the ratio of pairs at small separation $`N_p(\theta <10^{\prime \prime })`$ to those at larger separation, $`N_p(10^{\prime \prime }<\theta <60^{\prime \prime })`$. Based on the fitted values of $`\omega (\theta )`$ given in Table 5, we expect the ratio $`N_p(10^{\prime \prime }<\theta <60^{\prime \prime })/N_p(\theta <10^{\prime \prime })`$ to be around $`19`$. In the CFDF data (for a weighted average over all fields) we find this pair fraction is $`26\pm 6`$. Based on these statistics, we conclude that the CFDF dataset provides no convincing evidence for a small-scale departure from a power-law behaviour with $`\delta =0.8`$, a conclusion consistent with the observed small-scale behaviour of $`\omega (\theta )`$ in Figure 5.

We note that our bright measurement in Figure 11 deviates from our model curve at the $`1.5\sigma `$ level. We investigate the origin of this effect, measuring the median $`(VI)_{AB}`$ colour for each of our magnitude-limited samples. Our brighter samples are no redder than our fainter samples, suggesting that contamination by nearby bright ellipticals in this sample is minimal (furthermore, all magnitude limited samples are subject to the criterion $`(VI)_{AB}<1.0`$, from Equation 1). A more likely origin for this discrepancy is that in computing $`r_0`$, we assume that the redshift distribution of each magnitude limited sample is the same; a slightly lower mean redshift would imply a lower value for $`r_0`$.

Finally, we remark that in our fainter bin, our stated level of incompleteness of $`20\%`$ at $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ (Table 3) indicates that our surface densities may be underestimated by around $`0.2`$. Furthermore, if Lyman-break galaxies were especially dusty (although this is not supported by current observations; see Webb et al., 2003) we would expect the true Lyman-break galaxy density to be further underestimated. However, these considerations do not affect the principal conclusions of this work, as these effects are expected to be much smaller than the observed variation of clustering strength with apparent magnitude.

### 5.4 Linear bias estimates for the CFDF Lyman-break sample

The theoretical procedures described in the previous section can also be used to estimate of the effective bias, $`b`$, of the Lyman-break galaxy sample. From the comoving correlation length $`r_0`$ we can compute the observed r.m.s. galaxy density fluctuation within a sphere of $`8h^1`$ Mpc, $`\sigma _8^{gal}`$ (Magliocchetti et al., 2000). Dividing this quantity by the r.m.s. mass density fluctuation, computed from cluster-normalised models assuming the linear theory, we may derive the linear bias $`b`$. In Table 6 we present these results, together with Poisson errors, for a range of cosmologies.

In comparison, Adelberger et al. (1998), with a sample of spectroscopically confirmed Lyman-break galaxies at $`z3`$ for $`_{AB}<25.5`$, find $`b=4.0\pm 0.7`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. From the average of the fainter $`I_{AB}28`$ galaxies selected in the HDF-N and -S, Arnouts et al. (1999, 2002) find $`b=1.9\pm 0.4`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$.

Many studies agree on the strongly biased nature of the Lyman-break galaxy population, and provide evidence for a picture in which structures form hierarchically and massive objects form at highest peaks in the underlying density field (Kaiser, 1984; Bardeen et al., 1986). Our measurements of Lyman-break galaxies at $`I_{AB}=24.5`$ appear to support this picture. For very bright Lyman-break galaxies, at $`I_{AB}=23.5`$, we find correlation lengths of $`>10h^1`$ Mpc and a linear bias of $`b6`$ in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology. These biases would imply underlying dark matter halo masses for the Lyman-break galaxy of around $`10^{13}h^1`$ M, about a factor of ten above the most massive haloes of Lyman-break galaxy observed to date, but still comparable to the masses of present day $`M^{}`$ galaxies. We note that the clustering lengths of our brighter Lyman-break galaxies are comparable to those of the “extremely red object” (ERO) population (e.g. $`r_0=13.8\pm 1.5h^1`$ Mpc in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-flat cosmology – Daddi et al., 2001) and we speculate that, unlike the fainter Lyman-break objects studied previously, some fraction of these bright Lyman-break galaxies may evolve into EROs by $`z1`$, according to a galaxy conservation model with a fixed bias at burst (Mo & White, 1996).

## 6 Summary and conclusions

We have extracted a large sample of $`z3`$ Lyman-break galaxies from the Canada-France Deep Fields survey. Our catalogues cover an effective area of $`1700`$ arcmin2 in three separate large, contiguous fields. In total the survey contains 1294 Lyman-break candidates to a limiting magnitude of $`I_{AB}=24.5`$. Our conclusions are as follows (assuming $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$):

1. Number counts and surface densities of $`z3`$ galaxies selected in the CFDF agrees very well with literature measurements over the entire $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ magnitude range of our survey.

2. Using simulated catalogues, we demonstrate that at the limiting magnitude our catalogue contains contaminants at a level of $`30\%`$ or less.

3. We measure the two-point galaxy correlation function $`\omega (\theta )`$ of Lyman-break galaxies and show it is well described in term of a power law of slope $`\delta =0.8`$ even at small angular separations, where no excess of close pairs is found.

4. Assuming that Lyman-break galaxies in the CFDF survey are at $`\overline{z}=3.2`$, we derive the comoving correlation length, $`r_0`$, for a range of magnitude limited samples. For the whole $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$ sample, we find $`r_0=(5.9\pm 0.5)h^1`$ Mpc with the slope fixed to $`\gamma =1.8`$. For simultaneous fits of the slope and amplitude , we find for the CFDF-14hr field $`\gamma =1.8\pm 0.2`$ and $`r_0=(5.3_{2.2}^{+6.8})h^1`$ Mpc, and for the CFDF-22hr field $`\gamma =1.8\pm 0.3`$ and $`r_0=(6.3_{2.8}^{+17.9})h^1`$ Mpc, in good agreement with the values determined with the slope fixed.

5. In the CFDF-14hr field, we find a marginal dependence of $`r_0`$ on apparent magnitude: for Lyman-break galaxies with $`20.0<I_{AB}<23.5`$, we derive $`r_0=(11.6\pm 2.0)h^1`$ Mpc, whereas for $`23.5<I_{AB}<24.5`$ we find $`r_0=(5.0\pm 0.6)h^1`$ Mpc (in both cases for slopes fixed to $`\gamma =1.8`$). Allowing both the slope and amplitude to vary, this segregation is still detected at the $`3\sigma `$-level.

6. We investigate the dependence of $`r_0`$ on surface density, $`n`$, and find a strong correlation. For $`n=(0.09\pm 0.02)`$ arcmin-2, $`r_0=(11.6\pm 2.0)h^1`$ Mpc, whereas for $`n=(0.78\pm 0.24)`$ arcmin-2, we find $`r_0=(5.9\pm 0.5)h^1`$ Mpc.

7. A simple analytic model in which each Lyman-break galaxy traces one dark matter halo is able to reproduce the observed dependence of correlation length on abundance quite well, except for our very bright sample of Lyman-break galaxies, which deviates from the predictions of our models by around $`1.5\sigma `$.

8. We derived a linear bias $`b`$ by dividing the measured r.m.s. galaxy density fluctuation $`\sigma _8^{gal}`$ by the r.m.s. mass fluctuation $`\sigma _8^m`$ computed by assuming cluster-normalised linear theory. For our sample of Lyman-break galaxies, we find for $`20.0<I_{AB}<24.5`$, $`b=3.5\pm 0.3`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

SF and HJMCC wish to acknowledge the use of TERAPIX computer facilities at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, where part of the work for this paper was carried out. We would like to thank Chuck Steidel for providing us with his Lyman-break catalogue covering the 14hr field. We would also like to thank our referee for a detailed and thorough report which improved our paper. HJMCC’s work has been supported by MIUR postdoctoral grant COFIN-00-02 and a VIRMOS postdoctoral fellowship.


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# Data Acquisition Software for CMS HCAL Testbeams

## I Introduction

The CMS experiment is a large general-purpose high energy physics detector which will be used to study proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Although the experiment will not start operation for several years, the groups developing portions of the experiment, or subdetectors, are actively testing the electronics which will be used in the final experiment. The Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) group is well along in this project, and the current testbeam program is focused on evaluating the final designs for the electronics.

The HCAL testing program requires the development of data acquisition software which can handle the large number of channels and high data rate which the final electronics can produce. This paper describes the data acquisition software which was written for the 2002 test beam carried out at CERN, as well as describing the changes and extensions made for the 2003 program.

### I.1 Review of the HCAL Data Chain

Before launching into the details of the testbeam DAQ, it is worthwhile to briefly review CMS HCAL and its the data readout chain. Here we describe the setup used for the 2002 testbeam. The readout chain is shown schematically in Figure 1.

The CMS HCAL is a sampling calorimeter consisting of a brass absorber with plastic scintillator panels inserted into the absorber. The scintillation light from the panels is collected by wavelength-shifting fibers and transported to a hybrid photodiode (HPD) which converts the light into electrical charge. The charge signal is measured and encoded into a non-linear digital scale by the Charge Integrator IC (QIE). The QIE uses the LHC clock to divide time into regular bins and measures the accumulated charge in each time bin. Internally, the QIE uses capacitors to accumulate the charge and measure the voltage. There are four such capacitors in each QIE, and the QIE uses each capacitor in turn, discharging it for two clocks before using it again. Thus each subsequent time sample comes from a different capacitor-id or CAPID. In the final system, each time bin will be 25ns long, but for the 2002 testbeam a slower clock was used, which made each bin 33ns long.

The outputs of three QIE channels are digitally combined onto a high-speed optical link and sent to the HCAL Trigger/Readout (HTR) board htr . The 2002 HTR board could accept eight fiber links, corresponding to twenty-four QIE channels. The HTR board buffers the incoming digital data and transfers it to the Data Concentrator (DCC) dcc  when a Level 1 Accept (L1A) is received. Future revisions of the HTR board will also calculate trigger primitives for the trigger decision. The DCC is responsible for collating data from up to eighteen HTRs and transferring it on to the central DAQ. In the 2002 testbeam, the DCC transferred the data over a 32-bit SLINK fiber link to a PC.

### I.2 Requirements

The testbeam DAQ has several important requirements, which are not necessarily identical to the requirements for the final DAQ.

* Interfacing with testbeam trigger – the trigger electronics used for the 2002 testbeam provide information to the DAQ through a CAENV592 VME NIM register and require feedback from the DAQ through a second CAENV592.
* Readout of HCAL data input chain – the HCAL data chain generates 976 bytes of data per HTR per event or a total of 5856 bytes for each testbeam event (with six HTRs running). This data is dumped into a DMA buffer and the DAQ must parse and store it.
* Readout of testbeam subdetectors – the testbeam setup for the HCAL in 2002 includes several additional subdetectors such as a seven-by-seven crystal ECAL mock-up readout with CAENV792 QADCs and two wire chambers readout with a CAENV767 TDC. A schematic showing the relationship between the subdetectors and their readout electronics is shown in Figure 2.
* Flexible design – the testbeam DAQ should be flexible enough to function without the testbeam trigger system for special runs or testing away from the H2 testbeam area at CERN. Only minor configuration changes should be required to enable data taking with different sets of subdetectors or trigger sources.
* Radioactive source calibration – the DAQ must also be able to handle data from the radioactive source calibration, where the HTRs produce histograms of data from the different QIEs and transmit them at a regular rate without triggers. The DAQ must sift through the DMA buffers and find them.

## II Structure of the DAQ Software

### II.1 Modules

The DAQ software is written in C++ and runs under Linux kernels 2.2 and 2.4. The DAQ is divided into a set of modules, each of which is a separate thread of execution, running under the pthreadspthreads  multi-threading library. The communication between the threads and services such IP sockets are provided by a custom C++ library wrapping the underlying C-based services.

A module may handle the readout for a specific subdetector or it may analyze completed events for data quality monitoring or it may provide a more peripheral service like logging messages to disk or providing a interface between an external GUI and the DAQ core. The two most important modules in the DAQ are the EventBuilder and the RunManager, each of which is described in more detail below.

Each module has a state variable which may be in one of four major states: LOAD (just loaded), INIT (initializing, or initialized), RUN, or STOP (stopping data acquisition or stopped). Each of these states has substates which indicate whether the process is ongoing (such as INIT/RUN), it has completed successfully (such as STOP/OK), or it has failed (such as INIT/FAIL). Transitions between these states are triggered by broadcast messages.

The most important method which modules use to communicate is broadcast messages. Any module can broadcast a very simple message (one integer number in the range 0-255) to all modules. Messages in the range (0-31) can be ignored (masked off) if a module is not interested in them. In practice, only a small fraction (16/256) of the range of possible broadcast message codes was used.

A module can register one of its parameters as publicly accessible by assigning a string name and description to the parameter. Other modules can query a given module for its list of defined parameters and their current values. They may also change parameters, if the exporting module has allowed this. Within the DAQ, the set of parameters which were established when the INIT message was last broadcast are the set which are active for any data acquisition.

Modules which are directly involved in the high-bandwidth data-stream also exchange memory blocks containing event fragments or complete events as described below in the description of the EventBuilder.

### II.2 Configuration

When the DAQ application starts up, it reads a configuration file which specifies the modules to load and gives initial parameter values for the modules. Only the EventBuilder, Reporter, and RunParamManager modules are loaded into the DAQ by default. All other modules are loaded at run-time based on the configuration file. The configuration file is coded in XML and the DAQ uses the libxml2libxml2  XML parser from the Gnome project.

The XML configuration file contains two sections. The first section, “$`<`$Modules$`>`$”, contains a list of modules to load. For each module, the name of the module within the DAQ is specified first, then the class name, and the name of the shared library containing the class. The DAQ code uses a standard mechanism for loading classes and provides a preprocessor macro to create the necessary stub code.

The second section of file, “$`<`$Parameters$`>`$”, contains a list of modules and provides initial values for registered parameters in the module. Any registered parameter which is not read-only can be set using the parameter file. The DAQ framework is responsible for parsing the XML file and setting all the parameters specified in the relevant modules before sending the LOAD broadcast command.

### II.3 The EventBuilder

The EventBuilder module is responsible for collecting all the event fragments from the subdetector readout modules and assembling complete valid events. The EventBuilder defines streams of data associated with specific data blocks, such as the normal HCALData block produced during beam data running or the WireChamberData block which contains the data from the wire chambers. The EventBuilder must be configured to know which blocks to expect in a given run. Only events with all the configured blocks are considered good.

The EventBuilder has a configurable property which is the number of event buffers to allocate. All readout modules read this parameter to decide how many event fragment buffers they should locally allocate. This is the upper bound to how many events can be acquired within a spill. The EventBuilder allocates this many structures containing empty pointers for the readout streams. As readout modules receive triggers, they pass a pointer to the data for each event to the EventBuilder which organizes the pointers by data stream and event number.

Once the end of spill is signaled by the RunManager, the EventBuilder starts trying to assemble complete events. If all readout modules have completed (returned to the state RUN/RUN from RUN/BUSY), and there are still events which do not have all required fragments, the spill is declared bad and all events are thrown away. This behavior is required since not all subdetectors have reliable event counters and this eliminates the possibility of event data mismatch.

If the spill is good, the events are distributed to the “listeners”. These are threads (not full modules, but threads of a specific form set by the EventBuilder) which have registered themselves with the EventBuilder to receive all good events. The Writer module which stores the events to disk uses such a listener thread. Once all listeners have finished with the data blocks, the EventBuilder sends a broadcast message to all readout modules indicating that the event buffers are released and they can be reused for the next spill.

### II.4 The RunManager

The RunManager class is responsible for providing the TriggerData stream to the EventBuilder, for generating Readout and End-Of-Spill broadcast messages, and for logging completed runs into the database. The base RunManager class handles the database logging, but the other tasks are left to derived RunManager classes. These derived classes generate trigger messages in different ways depending on the physical setup required.

The main beam-data manager is the H2Manager class, which interfaces to the H2 trigger using two CAENV513 NIM register VME boards. The external trigger system signals the DAQ when triggered data should be read out and the H2Manager signals back to the trigger when the DAQ is ready for the next event. The trigger system also signals the manager when the spill is over and the manager broadcasts the message through the DAQ.

Other RunManagers of note include the SourceManager which is used for taking radioactive source calibration data and the BenchManager which is used for LED pulser runs with the special pulser setup in H2 or for generating triggers via software through the TTCvi module.

### II.5 HCAL Readout and Radioactive Source Data Taking

The HCAL readout module is the most complicated of the readout modules. There are usually six or more HTRs in the readout crate, but not all HTRs are needed at any given time. The HCALReadout module allows different HTRs to be enabled or disabled and handles the proper initialization for both the HTRs and the DCC.

The HCALReadout module uses the SLINK driver developed by the University of Hawaii slinkhi . The module configures the driver to put the data acquired during a spill into a single DMA block in memory. As the HTRs receive triggers and push the data on to the DCC, the DCC forwards the data over the SLINK to the PC where it appears in the DMA buffer. At the end of a spill, the HCALReadout module picks through the buffer and finds the event fragments from each HTR. The DCC does not wrap the events with a header or trailer, so the DAQ simply takes “one block from each HTR” as a complete event. If two blocks appear from one HTR before one from another, a warning message is issued.

During data taking with the radioactive source, no triggers are generated. Instead, the HTRs build histograms and forward them to the DCC at a fixed rate. Within the DAQ, each set of histograms is taken as “one event”. Since the RunManager and EventBuilder need to know how many events were taken, the HCALReadout module counts how many it sees in the DMA buffer when it receives a special broadcast message.

The special message is sent by the SourceManager, which receives information about the position of the source and whether the run is complete via DIM (see below). The SourceManager then asserts that the number of events which the HCALReadout saw occurred. Since the reel position data arrives at a different rate than the histograms, the SourceManager then must map the reel data onto the same number of events as the histograms. For this purpose the SourceManager uses the time-stamp which is sent along with the reel data from the source control computer.

### II.6 Other Standard Modules

Besides the major modules, there are many other modules which can be loaded into the DAQ. The ECALReadout module reads out the 7x7 ECAL matrix using a pair of CAENV792 VME QADCs. The TDCReadout module reads out the wire chambers and other timing measurements using a CAENV767 VME TDC. The RunParamManager module provides central repository for information to be stored in the RunData section of the files. The module allows new parameters to be created inside itself and all the parameters defined in the module are automatically stored into the RunData header by the Writer. Some of the information is also put into the Runs Database. Finally, the Writer module is responsible for storing the completed events in a ROOT file.

### II.7 The Java GUI

The DAQ process does not itself provide any mechanism for a user interface to control the run. Such an interface can provided by a module, and multiple modules could be written to control the DAQ using different communication techniques. During normal operations, the DAQ was controlled using a Java application which communicated with the DAQ through a custom remote-procedure-call (RPC) protocol. The RPC protocol is transported using the standard TCP/IP transport, so the GUI program does not have to be run on the same machine as the DAQ. The Java GUI used the services of the ExternalInterface module.

The protocol allows the GUI to obtain the state of the system in the form of an XML document which has the same format and structure as the “$`<`$Parameters$`>`$” section of the configuration file. The GUI parses this XML document to determine the state of all the registered parameters. The protocol also allows the GUI to change the values of parameters and to send broadcast command messages. The Java GUI also incorporates a plotting package which can access the histograms exported by the StatsMan module through the HistoExporter class. These histograms are available on an IP port in text form, and the GUI can plot these online monitoring histograms.

### II.8 Interaction with DIM

The Distributed Information Management System software dim  has emerged as a powerful, general, and freely-distributable tool for exporting and accessing structured data and sending commands. Heavy use of DIM will be made at CMS and LHC, not least because of the DIM$``$PVSS gateway which has been developed. The current version of the DAQ does not include a module to allow direct control of the DAQ through DIM, but it does use DIM to gather several important types of data.

The DAQ includes a module called InfoGrabber which allows the DAQ to pull information from several DIM servers. From the BeamInfoDataServer, the DAQ can learn the beam energy, beam settings, and the particle type. From the TableDataServer, the DAQ can learn the position of the movable table on which the HCAL and ECAL are mounted. Other servers provide temperature measurements of the ECAL matrix, and allow configuration commands to be sent to the QIEs and other front-end chips from a Windows machine. DIM is also used during source data taking to obtain the reel position and other data from the source control computer.

### II.9 Persistent Data Format

The data is stored in a ROOT Tree format, where each event is represented by an object of type TestBeamData, which may contain pointers to other data blocks. Each of the data blocks is placed onto its own ROOT branch. A C++ library is provided for users to access and reconstruct the data in the ROOT files. Complete documentation for this library can be found in reference HTBDAQData .

### II.10 Runs Database

Basic configuration data and statistics for each saved run are stored in a runs database. The database consists of a set of XML files which contain entries for a range of run numbers. This database is cached in AFS space and also is available for querying on the web. More information about the runs database can be found at HTBDAQRunsdb  and the main DAQ website tbpage .

## III Performance of the DAQ Software

The DAQ Software worked well for the 2002 testbeam. During the summer running, 3,081 runs were taken covering some 53,182 spills and containing 100,655,201 events. The data volume recorded into the central data recording was 280GB, with an average compression ratio (from ROOT) of 2.1:1. On average, the DAQ was run at rate of 1700 events per spill or 350 Hz, but when the beam intensity was increased the readout rate reached 4720 events per spill or 960 Hz. The data acquired has proved extremely useful in understanding the performance of the final system and testing the calibration and resolution of the calorimeter.

After the summer testbeam, the DAQ software was used at Fermilab to evaluate new QIE boards for the 2003 test beam and to acquire data on radiation damage of QIEs at the Indiana Cyclotron Facility.

The testbeam program for the HCAL will continue in 2003, and the DAQ software is changing to approach the final software structure which will be used in CMS. The custom base library will be replaced by the xDAQ library xdaq , while the configuration management will be significantly updated to support increasing complicated configurations. The custom XML-based runs database will be transferred into a standard SQL server form, which will improve the stability of the system. The goals for 2003 include structured beam running for the barrel part of the calorimeter, a first look at the endcap sections with the final electronics, and study and calibration of the forward hadron calorimeter. It will be challenging to acquire and process the required data volumes, but the results will be bring the CMS HCAL closer to operational status.