We study six luminous Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) with very blue rest-frame UV continua at 5.7≤z≤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 are in a range of −3.4≤β≤−2.6. Unlike previous, tentative detections of β≃−3 in photometrically selected, low-luminosity galaxies, our LAEs are spectroscopically confirmed and luminous (MUV<−20 mag). We model their broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and find that two β≃−2.6±0.2 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 fesc, very low metallicities, and/or AGN contributions. Assuming fesc≃0.2, we achieve the bluest slopes β≃−2.7 when nebular emission is considered. This can nearly explain the SEDs of two galaxies with β≃−2.8 and --2.9 (σβ=0.15). Larger fesc 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 β≃−2.9 galaxy can potentially be well explained by the combination of a very young population with a high fesc (≥0.5) and an old, dusty population. We are not able to produce two β≃−3.4±0.4 galaxies. Future deep spectroscopic observations are needed to fully understand these galaxies.
@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