The Environment of Lyman Break Analogues (ELBA) survey: Star-forming
  galaxies in small groups
  The Environment of Lyman Break Analogues (ELBA) survey is an imaging survey
of 33 $deg^{2}$ of the southern sky. The survey was observed in {\it u}, {\it
g}, {\it r}, and {\it i} bands with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the
Blanco telescope. The main goal of this project is to investigate the
environment of Lyman break analogues (LBAs), low-redshift (z $\sim $0.2)
galaxies that are remarkably similar to typical star-forming galaxies at z
$\sim$ 3. We explore whether the environment has any influence on the observed
properties of these galaxies, providing valuable insight on the formation and
evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Using the Nearest Neighbour method, we
measure the local density of each object ranging from small to large scales
(clusters of galaxies). Comparing the environment around LBAs with that of the
general galaxy population in the field, we conclude that LBAs, on average,
populate denser regions at small scales ($\sim$ $1.5Mpc$), but are located in
similar environment to other star-forming galaxies at larger scales ($\sim$
$3.0 Mpc$). This offers evidence that nearby encounters such as mergers may
influence the star formation activity in LBAs, before infall onto larger galaxy
clusters. We interpret this an indication of galaxy preprocessing, in agreement
with theoretical expectations for galaxies at z $\sim$ 2 -3 where the
gravitational interactions are more intense in early formation processes of
this objects
