The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey
The evolution of galaxy clustering per spectral type to z 
1.5
1
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, UMR 6110 CNRS, Université de Provence, BP 8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France e-mail: baptiste.meneux@oamp.fr
2
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, Italy
3
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani,1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
4
Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Astronomia, via Ranzani, 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
5
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, Milan, Italy
6
Centre de Physique Theorique, UMR 6207 CNRS, Université de Provence, case 907, 13288 Marseille, France
7
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, UMR 7095, 98 bis Bvd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
8
Observatoire de Paris, LERMA, 61 Avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
9
INAF – IASF Milano, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
10
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (UMR 5572), 14 avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
11
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via di Frascati 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone, Italy
12
IRA – INAF, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
13
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, via Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
14
Max Planck Institut fur Astrophysik, 85741 Garching, Germany
15
School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
16
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching bei Munchen, Germany
17
Integral Science Data Centre, ch. d'Écogia 16, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
18
Geneva Observatory, ch. des Maillettes 51, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
Received:
22
November
2005
Accepted:
11
February
2006
We measure
the evolution of clustering for galaxies with different spectral types
from 6495 galaxies with 
and measured spectroscopic
redshifts in the first epoch VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS). We divide our
sample into four classes, based on the fit of well-defined galaxy spectral
energy distributions on observed multi-color data.
We measure the projected correlation function 
and estimate the best-fit
parameters for a power-law real-space correlation function 
.
We find the clustering of early-spectral-type galaxies to be markedly
stronger than that of late-type galaxies at all redshifts up to 
.
At 
, early-type galaxies display a correlation length
h-1 Mpc, while late types have 
h-1 Mpc.
For the latest class of star-forming blue galaxies, we are able
to push our clustering measurement to an effective redshift 
,
for luminous galaxies (
). The clustering of
these objects increases up to 
h-1 Mpc for 
.
The relative bias between early- and late-type galaxies within our magnitude-limited survey
remains approximately constant with 
from 
to 
.
This result is in agrement with the local findings and fairly robust against different
way of classifying red and blue galaxies. When compared to the expected linear growth
of mass fluctuations, a natural interpretation of these observations is that:
(a) the assembly of massive early type galaxies is already mostly complete in the densest
dark matter halos at 
;
(b) luminous late-type galaxies are located in higher-density, more clustered regions of
the Universe at 
than their local low luminous counterpart, indicating that
star formation activity is progressively increasing, going back in time, in the higher-density peaks that
today are mostly dominated by old galaxies.
Key words: surveys / galaxies: evolution / cosmology: large scale structure of Universe / cosmology: observations
© ESO, 2006