We present the results of a Keck and NOEMA spectroscopic survey of 507 galaxies, where we confirm the presence of two massive overdensities at z=3.090−3.110 and z=3.133−3.155 in the neighborhood of the GOODS-N, each with over a dozen spectroscopically confirmed members. We find that both of these have galaxy overdensities of NIR-detected galaxies of δgal,obs=6−9 within corrected volumes of (6−7)×103cMpc3. We estimate the properties of the z=0 descendants of these overdensities using a spherical collapse model and find that both should virialize by z≃0.5−0.8, with total masses of Mtot≃(6−7)×1014M⊙. The same spherical collapse calculations, as well as a clustering-of-clusters statistical analysis, suggest a >80% likelihood that the two overdensities will collapse into a single cluster with Mtot=(1.0−1.5)×1015M⊙ by z∼0.1−0.4. The z=3.14 substructure contains a core of four bright dusty star-forming galaxies with ΣSFR=2700±700M⊙yr−1 in a volume of only 280 cMpc3.
@article{arxiv.2411.07291,
title = {Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Massive Protocluster with Two Substructures at $z \simeq 3.1$},
author = {Michael J. Nicandro Rosenthal and Amy J. Barger and Lennox L. Cowie and Logan H. Jones and Stephen J. McKay and Anthony J. Taylor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.07291},
year = {2024}
}