We present a physically motivated semi-analytic model to understand the clustering of high redshift LBGs. We show that the model parameters constrained by the observed luminosity function, can be used to predict large scale (��> 80 arcsec) bias and angular correlation function of galaxies. These predictions are shown to reproduce the observations remarkably well. We then adopt these model parameters to calculate the halo occupation distribution (HOD) using the conditional mass function. The halo model using this HOD is shown to provide a reasonably good fit to the observed clustering of LBGs at both large (��>80") and small (��< 10") angular scales for z=3-5 and several limiting magnitudes. However, our models underpredict the clustering amplitude at intermediate angular scales, where quasi-linear effects are important. The average mass of halos contributing to the observed clustering is found to be 6.2 x 10^{11} M_\odot and the characteristic mass of a parent halo hosting satellite galaxies is 1.2 \times 10^{12} M_\odot for a limiting absolute magnitude of -20.5 at z=4. For a given threshold luminosity these masses decrease with increasing z and at any given z these are found to increase with increasing value of threshold luminosity. We find that approximately 40 % of the halos above a minimum mass M_{min}, can host detectable central galaxies and about 5-10 % of these halos are likely to also host a detectable satellite. The satellites form typically a dynamical timescale prior to the formation of the parent halo. The small angular scale clustering is due to central-satellite pairs and is quite sensitive to changes in the duration of star formation in a halo. The present data favor star formation in a halo lasting typically for a few dynamical time-scales. Our models also reproduce different known trends between parameters related to star formation.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS