A Search for the submillimetre counterparts to Lyman break galaxies

We have carried out targeted submillimetre observations as part of a programme to explore the connection between the rest-frame ultraviolet and far-infrared properties of star-forming galaxies at high redshift, which is currently poorly understood. On the one hand, the Lyman break technique is very effective at selecting galaxies. On the other, ‘blank-field’ imaging in the submillimetre seems to turn up sources routinely, amongst which some are star-forming galaxies at similar redshifts. Already much work has been done searching for optical identifications of objects detected using the SCUBA instrument. Here we have taken the opposite approach, performing submillimetre photometry for a sample of Lyman break galaxies, the ultraviolet properties of which imply high star formation rates. The total signal from our Lyman break sample is undetected in the submillimetre, at an rms level of ∼0.5 mJy, which implies that the population of Lyman break galaxies does not constitute a large part of the recently detected blank-field submillimetre sources. However, our one detection suggests that with reasonable SCUBA integrations we might expect to detect those few Lyman break galaxies that are far-infrared brightest.