Ultra-Red Galaxies Signpost Candidate Proto-Clusters at High Redshift

We present images obtained with LABOCA on the APEX telescope of a sample of 22 galaxies selected via their red Herschel SPIRE 250-, 350- and $500textrm{-}mutextrm{m}$ colors. We aim to see if these luminous, rare and distant galaxies are signposting dense regions in the early Universe. Our $870textrm{-}mutextrm{m}$ survey covers an area of $approx0.8,textrm{deg}^2$ down to an average r.m.s. of $3.9,textrm{mJy beam}^{-1}$, with our five deepest maps going $approx2times$ deeper still. We catalog 86 DSFGs around our signposts, detected above a significance of $3.5sigma$. This implies a $100pm30%$ over-density of $S_{870}>8.5,textrm{mJy}$ DSFGs, excluding our signposts, when comparing our number counts to those in blank fields. Thus, we are $99.93%$ confident that our signposts are pinpointing over-dense regions in the Universe, and $approx95%$ confident that these regions are over-dense by a factor of at least $ge1.5times$. Using template SEDs and SPIRE/LABOCA photometry we derive a median photometric redshift of $z=3.2pm0.2$ for our signposts, with an interquartile range of $z=2.8textrm{-}3.6$. We constrain the DSFGs likely responsible for this over-density to within $|Delta z|le0.65$ of their respective signposts. These associated DSFGs are radially distributed within $1.6pm0.5,textrm{Mpc}$ of their signposts, have median SFRs of $approx(1.0pm0.2)times10^3,M_{odot},textrm{yr}^{-1}$ (for a Salpeter stellar IMF) and median gas reservoirs of $sim1.7times10^{11},M_{odot}$. These candidate proto-clusters have average total SFRs of at least $approx (2.3pm0.5)times10^3,M_{odot},textrm{yr}^{-1}$ and space densities of $sim9times10^{-7},textrm{Mpc}^{-3}$, consistent with the idea that their constituents may evolve to become massive ETGs in the centers of the rich galaxy clusters we see today.