English

Luminous Lyman-alpha Emitters with Very Blue UV-continuum Slopes at Redshift 5.7 <= z <= 6.6

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-02-12 v1

Abstract

We study six luminous Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) with very blue rest-frame UV continua at 5.7z6.65.7\le z \le 6.6. These LAEs have previous HST and Spitzer IRAC observations. Combining our newly acquired HST images, we find that their UV-continuum slopes β\beta are in a range of 3.4β2.6-3.4\le \beta \le -2.6. Unlike previous, tentative detections of β3\beta \simeq -3 in photometrically selected, low-luminosity galaxies, our LAEs are spectroscopically confirmed and luminous (MUV<20M_{\rm UV}<-20 mag). We model their broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and find that two β2.6±0.2\beta\simeq-2.6\pm0.2 galaxies can be well fitted with young and dust-free stellar populations. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to fit bluer galaxies. We explore further interpretations by including non-zero LyC escape fraction fescf_{\rm esc}, very low metallicities, and/or AGN contributions. Assuming fesc0.2f_{\rm esc}\simeq0.2, we achieve the bluest slopes β2.7\beta\simeq-2.7 when nebular emission is considered. This can nearly explain the SEDs of two galaxies with β2.8\beta\simeq-2.8 and --2.9 (σβ=0.15\sigma_{\beta}=0.15). Larger fescf_{\rm esc} values and very low metallicities are not favored by the strong nebular line emission (evidenced by the IRAC flux) or the observed (IRAC 1 - IRAC 2) color. Finally, we find that the β2.9\beta\simeq-2.9 galaxy can potentially be well explained by the combination of a very young population with a high fescf_{\rm esc} (0.5\ge0.5) and an old, dusty population. We are not able to produce two β3.4±0.4\beta \simeq -3.4 \pm0.4 galaxies. Future deep spectroscopic observations are needed to fully understand these galaxies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.02028,
  title  = {Luminous Lyman-alpha Emitters with Very Blue UV-continuum Slopes at Redshift 5.7 <= z <= 6.6},
  author = {Linhua Jiang and Seth H. Cohen and Rogier A. Windhorst and Eiichi Egami and Kristian Finlator and Daniel Schaerer and Fengwu Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.02028},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Published in ApJ on 2020 Feb 1; Authors' version (9 pages); See published version at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab64ea