Clustering properties of Lyman-break galaxies

The high efficiency of the Lyman-break technique has made clustering of star-forming galaxies at high redshifts a powerful instrument ment to test fundamental ideas on galaxy formation. The discovery that Lyman-break galaxies are strongly clustered in space, and that the clustering strength is a function of their UV luminosity sets important empirical constraints on the yet largely unknown relationship between dark matter and star formation activity. The former provides direct support to the notion that visible galaxies form in highly biased dark matter halos. The latter implies a tight correlation between the mass of the halos and the star-formation rates of the galaxies, suggesting that star formation in high redshift systems is a process regulated by the local gravity much more than by "external" random occurrences such as interactions.