English

ODIN: The LAE Ly{\alpha} Luminosity Function over Cosmic Time and Environmental Density

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-10-21 v2

Abstract

The ubiquity and relative ease of discovery make 2z52\lesssim z\lesssim 5 Lyα\alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) ideal tracers for cosmology. In addition, because Lyα\alpha is a resonance line, but frequently observed at large equivalent width, it is potentially a probe of galaxy evolution. The LAE Lyα\alpha luminosity function (LF) is an essential measurement for making progress on both of these aspects. Although several studies have computed the LAE LF, very few have delved into how the function varies with environment. The large area and depth of the One-hundred-deg2^2 DECam Imaging in Narrowbands (ODIN) survey makes such measurements possible at the cosmic noon redshifts of z~2.4, ~3.1, and ~4.5. In this initial work, we present algorithms to rigorously compute the LAE LF and test our methods on the ~16,000 ODIN LAEs found in the extended COSMOS field. Using these limited samples, we find slight evidence that protocluster environments either suppress the numbers of very faint and very bright LAEs or enhance medium-bright LAEs in comparison to the field. We also find that the LF decreases in number density and evolves towards a steeper faint-end slope over cosmic time from z~4.5 to z~2.4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.14510,
  title  = {ODIN: The LAE Ly{\alpha} Luminosity Function over Cosmic Time and Environmental Density},
  author = {Gautam Nagaraj and Robin Ciardullo and Caryl Gronwall and Vandana Ramakrishnan and Kyoung-Soo Lee and Eric Gawiser and Nicole M. Firestone and Govind Ramgopal and J. Aguilar and Steven Ahlen and Davide Bianchi and David Brooks and Francisco Javier Castander and Todd Claybaugh and Andrei Cuceu and Axel de la Macorra and Arjun Dey and Biprateep Dey and Peter Doel and Jaime Forero-Romero and Enrique Gaztanaga and Satya Gontcho A Gontcho and Gaston Gutierrez and Hiram K. Herrera-Alcantar and Klaus Honscheid and Mustapha Ishak and Robert Kehoe and David Kirkby and T. Kisner and Anthony Kremin and Martin Landriau and Laurent Le Guillou and Michael Levi and Christophe Magneville and Marc Manera and Paul Martini and Aaron M. Meisner and Ramon Miquel and John Moustakas and Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille and Francisco Prada and Ignasi Perez-Rafols and Graziano Rossi and Lado Samushia and Eusebio Sanchez and David J. Schlegel and Michael F. Schubnell and Hee-Jong Seo and Joseph H. Silber and David Sprayberry and Gregory Tarle and Francisco Valdes and Benjamin A. Weaver and Martin White and Rongpu Zhou and Hu Zou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.14510},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

23 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables, accepted to ApJ

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:21:51.696Z