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 10^10.7-12.1 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 10^11.5-12.6 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 10^9.5 M_⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 10^13.0 M_⊙ haloes. For [O II] emitters, the faintest emitters are found in 10^10.5 M_⊙ haloes and the brightest emitters in 10^12.6 M_⊙ haloes. A redshift-independent stellar mass dependency is also observed where the halo mass increases from 10¹¹ to 10^12.5 M_⊙ for stellar masses of 10^8.5 to 10^11.5 M_⊙, respectively. We investigate the interdependencies of these trends by repeating our analysis in a L_line-M_star 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 10^12.5-13 M_⊙, which may be due to quenching mechanisms in massive haloes that is consistent with a transitional halo mass predicted by models.