Abstract

" In 2000, we started the program ""Building the Bridge between Damped Lyman-? Absorbers and Lyman-Break Galaxies: Ly? Selection of Galaxies"" at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). This project is an attempt to use the Ly? selection of high-redshift galaxies to bridge the gap between absorption- and emission-line selected galaxies by creating a large database of z ? 3 galaxies belonging to the abundant population of faint (R > 25:5) galaxies associated to Damped Ly? Absorbers (DLAs). Here we present the first part of our program, namely results from a deep Ly? study of the field of the z = 2:85 DLA toward the quasar Q2138-4427. "