Spectroscopically Confirmed Lyman-Alpha Emitters from Redshift 5 to 7 Behind Ten Galaxy Cluster Lenses
Abstract
We present 36 spectroscopically confirmed intrinsically UV-faint Ly emitting galaxies from follow-up observations with Keck/DEIMOS of gravitationally lensed high-redshift candidates. Candidates were selected to be between from photometric data using \textit{HST} and \textit{Spitzer} imaging surveys. We used photometric redshift information to perform an integrated photometric redshift probability cut between to construct a sample of 198 high-redshift objects. Our high-redshift sample spans intrinsic UV luminosities from a few down to . We identified 19 high-confidence detections of Ly and an additional 17 likely detections. We divided our sample into lower-redshift () and higher-redshift () bins and ran Monte Carlo trials, incorporating the strength of the Ly emission and the photometric redshift of the non-detections. Considering only objects where Ly could be detected at EW(Ly)25{\AA} at at the fiducial depth of our survey, and only those galaxies with EW(Ly)25{\AA} as true LAEs, and finally, only objects with , we found the LAE fraction to be flat, or modestly increase from 0.26 to 0.30. These values relative to those for lower-redshift samples are consistent with a rising LAE fraction with redshift out to , but at there is some tension between our results and results from surveys at intrinsically brighter luminosities. We conclude intrinsically fainter galaxies have Ly emission, and there is a steep drop in the LAE fraction from our high-redshift sample at and from similar galaxies at . 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