On the dependence between UV luminosity and Lyα equivalent width in high redshift galaxies

We show that with the simple assumption of no correlation between the Lyα equivalent width and the UV luminosity of a galaxy, the observed distribution of high redshift galaxies in an equivalent width – absolute UV magnitude plane can be reproduced. We further show that there is no dependence between Lyα equivalent width and Lyα luminosity in a sample of Lyα emitters. The test was expanded to Lyman-break galaxies and again no dependence was found. Simultaneously, we show that a recently proposed lack of large equivalent width, UV bright galaxies (Ando et al. 2006) can be explained by a simple observational effect, based on too small survey volumes.