We detect correlations in the cosmic far-infrared background due to the clustering of star-forming galaxies in observations made with the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope , BLAST , at 250 , 350 , and 500 \mu m. We perform jackknife and other tests to confirm the reality of the signal .
The measured correlations are well fit by a power law over scales of 5–25 arcminutes , with \Delta I / I = 15.1 \pm 1.7 \% .
We adopt a specific model for submillimeter sources in which the contribution to clustering comes from sources in the redshift ranges { 1.3 \leq z \leq 2.2 ,~ { } 1.5 \leq z \leq 2.7 ,~ { } and~ { } 1.7 \leq z \leq 3.2 } , at 250 , 350 and 500 \mu m , respectively .
With these distributions , our measurement of the power spectrum , P ( k _ { \theta } ) , corresponds to linear bias parameters , b = 3.8 \pm 0.6 , 3.9 \pm 0.6 and 4.4 \pm 0.7 , respectively .
We further interpret the results in terms of the halo model , and find that at the smaller scales , the simplest halo model fails to fit our results .
One way to improve the fit is to increase the radius at which dark matter halos are artificially truncated in the model , which is equivalent to having some star-forming galaxies at z \geq 1 located in the outskirts of groups and clusters .
In the context of this model we find a minimum halo mass required to host a galaxy is \mathrm { log } ( M _ { \mathrm { min } } / M _ { \odot } ) = 11.5 _ { -0.1 } ^ { +0.4 } , and we derive effective biases b _ { eff } = 2.2 \pm 0.2 , 2.4 \pm 0.2 , and 2.6 \pm 0.2 , and effective masses \mathrm { log } ( M _ { \mathrm { eff } } / M _ { \odot } ) = 12.9 \pm 0.3 , 12.8 \pm 0.2 , and 12.7 \pm 0.2 , at 250 , 350 and 500 \mu m , corresponding to spatial correlation lengths of r _ { 0 } = 4.9 , 5.0 , and 5.2 ~ { } \pm 0.7 ~ { } h ^ { -1 } ~ { } Mpc , respectively .
Finally , we discuss implications for clustering measurement strategies with Herschel and Planck .