The clustering of H β + [O III] and [O II] emitters since z ∼ 5: Dependencies with line luminosity and stellar mass

We investigate the clustering properties of ∼7000 H β + [O III] and [O II] narrowband-selected emitters at z ∼ 0.8–4.7 from the High-z Emission Line Survey. We find clustering lengths, r0, of 1.5–4.0 h−1 Mpc and minimum dark matter halo masses of 1010.7–12.1 M⊙ for our z = 0.8–3.2 H β + [O III] emitters and r0 ∼ 2.0–8.3 h−1 Mpc and halo masses of 1011.5–12.6 M⊙ for our z = 1.5–4.7 [O II] emitters. We find r0 to strongly increase both with increasing line luminosity and redshift. By taking into account the evolution of the characteristic line luminosity, L⋆(z), and using our model predictions of halo mass given r0, we find a strong, redshift-independent increasing trend between L/L⋆(z) and minimum halo mass. The faintest H β + [O III] emitters are found to reside in 109.5 M⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 1013.0 M⊙ haloes. For [O II] emitters, the faintest emitters are found in 1010.5 M⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 1012.6 M⊙ haloes. A redshift-independent stellar mass dependency is also observed where the halo mass increases from 1011 to 1012.5 M⊙ for stellar masses of 108.5 to 1011.5 M⊙, respectively. We investigate the interdependencies of these trends by repeating our analysis in a Lline−Mstar grid space for our most populated samples (H β + [O III] z = 0.84 and [O II] z = 1.47) and find that the line luminosity dependency is stronger than the stellar mass dependency on halo mass. For L > L⋆ emitters at all epochs, we find a relatively flat trend with halo masses of 1012.5–13 M⊙, which may be due to quenching mechanisms in massive haloes that is consistent with a transitional halo mass predicted by models.