2011ApJ...740...71D -
Astrophys. J., 740, 71 (2011/October-3)
Detections of faint Lyα emitters at z = 5.7: galaxy building blocks and engines of reionization.
DRESSLER A., MARTIN C.L., HENRY A., SAWICKI M. and McCARTHY P.
Abstract (from CDS):
We report results of an unprecedentedly deep, blind search for Lyα emitters (LAEs) at z = 5.7 using the Inamori-Magellan Areal Camera & Spectrograph (IMACS), with the goal of identifying missing sources of reionization that could also be basic building blocks for today's L* galaxies. We describe how improvements in wide field imaging with the Baade telescope, upgrades to IMACS, and the accumulation of ∼20 hr of integration per field in excellent seeing led to the detection of single-emission-line sources as faint as F ~ 2x10–18 erg/s/cm2, a sensitivity five times deeper than our first search. A reasonable correction for foreground interlopers implies a steep rise of approximately an order of magnitude in source density for a factor of four drop in flux, from F = 10–17.0 erg/s/cm2 to F = 10-17.6^ (2.5x10–18) erg/s/cm2. At this flux the putative LAEs have reached a surface density of ∼1/arcmin2–a comoving volume density of 4x10–3/Mpc3, several times the density of L* galaxies today. Such a population of faint LAEs would account for a significant fraction of the critical flux density required to complete reionization at this epoch, and would be good candidates for building blocks of stellar mass ∼108-109 M☉ for the young galaxies of this epoch.
Abstract Copyright:
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Journal keyword(s):
dark ages, reionization, first stars - galaxies: formation - galaxies: high-redshift - galaxies: luminosity function, mass function
Simbad objects:
5
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