Astronomy Tea Talk

We present a survey of bright z~3  Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) in the NOAO Bootes fields and SDSS deep stripe field. Our new LBT U-band survey, together with the existing NOAO Bootes field survey, allows us to build up a sample of 15,000 photometrically-selected LBGs at z~3.  With the large LBG sample, we study UV luminosity function and clustering of bright z~3 LBGs.  Our z~3 LBG sample, together with other high-z LBG samples, is used to test the cold flow accretion model and put strong constraints on the star formation efficiency in these galaxies.  Furthermore, Our survey also reveal a population of the most luminous LBGs at z~3. With L> 5L* and  star formation rate (SFR) ~300 M/yr.  These spectroscopically-confirmed LBGs are some of the rarest and most intensive star forming systems in the early Universe, and they show remarkable properties compared to typical L* LBGs.