English

Spectroscopically Confirmed Lyman-Alpha Emitters from Redshift 5 to 7 Behind Ten Galaxy Cluster Lenses

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2020-07-01 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present 36 spectroscopically confirmed intrinsically UV-faint Lyα\alpha emitting galaxies from follow-up observations with Keck/DEIMOS of gravitationally lensed high-redshift candidates. Candidates were selected to be between 5z75\lesssim z \lesssim 7 from photometric data using \textit{HST} and \textit{Spitzer} imaging surveys. We used photometric redshift information to perform an integrated photometric redshift probability cut >1%>1\% between 5<z<75<z<7 to construct a sample of 198 high-redshift objects. Our high-redshift sample spans intrinsic UV luminosities from a few LL^* down to 0.001L0.001L^*. We identified 19 high-confidence detections of Lyα\alpha and an additional 17 likely detections. We divided our sample into lower-redshift (z5.5z\sim5.5) and higher-redshift (z6.5z\sim6.5) bins and ran Monte Carlo trials, incorporating the strength of the Lyα\alpha emission and the photometric redshift of the non-detections. Considering only objects where Lyα\alpha could be detected at EW(Lyα\alpha)>>25{\AA} at 3σ3\sigma at the fiducial depth of our survey, and only those galaxies with EW(Lyα\alpha)>>25{\AA} as true LAEs, and finally, only objects with mAB<26.8m_{AB}<26.8, we found the LAE fraction to be flat, or modestly increase from 0.26±0.04\pm0.04 to 0.30±0.04\pm0.04. These values relative to those for lower-redshift samples are consistent with a rising LAE fraction with redshift out to z6z\sim6, but at z6.5z\sim6.5 there is some tension between our results and results from surveys at intrinsically brighter luminosities. We conclude intrinsically fainter galaxies have Lyα\alpha emission, and there is a steep drop in the LAE fraction from our high-redshift sample at z6.5z\sim6.5 and from similar galaxies at z7.5z\sim7.5. This likely indicates we are witnessing the tail end of the epoch of reionization, as such a drop is not expected due to changes of intrinsic galaxy properties between these redshifts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.08952,
  title  = {Spectroscopically Confirmed Lyman-Alpha Emitters from Redshift 5 to 7 Behind Ten Galaxy Cluster Lenses},
  author = {Spencer Fuller and Brian Lemaux and Maruša Bradač and Austin Hoag and Kasper Schmidt and Kuang Huang and Victoria Strait and Charlotte Mason and Tommaso Treu and Laura Pentericci and Michele Trenti and Alaina Henry and Matt Malkan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.08952},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

21 pages, 10 figures, submitted to ApJ