Galaxies at z = 6 - 9 from the WFC3/IR imaging of the HUDF

By R. McLure, J. Dunlop, M. Cirasuolo, A. Koekemoer, E. Sabbi, D. Stark, Thomas Targett, Richard S. Ellis. 2009

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the results of a systematic search for galaxies in the redshift range z = 6 - 9, within the new, deep, near-infrared imaging of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field provided by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on HST. We have performed full SED fitting to the optical+infrared photometry of all high-redshift galaxy candidates detected at greater than 5-sigma in at least one of the WFC3/IR broad-band filters. After rejection of contaminants, the result is a sample of 49 galaxies with primary redshift solutions z > 5.9. Our sample, selected without recourse to specific colour cuts, re-selects all but the faintest one of the 16 z-drops selected by Oesch et al. (2009), recovers all 5 of the Y-drops reported by Bouwens et al. (2009), and adds a further 29 galaxy candidates, of which 12 lie beyond z = 6.3, and 4 lie beyond z = 7. We also present confidence intervals on our photometric redshift estimates, and caution that acceptable low-redshift (z 6.3, and for all 8 galaxy candidates at z > 7.5. Nevertheless, the very highest redshift candidates appear to be strongly clustered in the field. We derive new estimates of the ultraviolet galaxy luminosity function at z = 7 and z = 8. Where our results are most robust, at a characteristic luminosity M(1500) ~ -19.5 (AB), we find that the comoving number density of galaxies declines by a factor of ~ 2.5 between z = 6 and z = 7, and by a further factor of ~ 2 by z = 8. These results suggest that it is difficult for the observed population of high-redshift star-forming galaxies to achieve reionisation by z ~ 6 without a significant contribution from galaxies well below the detection limits, plus alterations in the escape fraction of ionising photons and/or continued vigorous star formation at z > 15.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/343e1bfff7b1a996c2137369814493affd877cc4

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. J. Dunlop
3. P. Oesch
4. R. Bouwens
5. L. Hernquist
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. P. Hopkins
8. M. Franx

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. J. Dunlop
3. R. Bouwens
4. P. Oesch
5. D. Stark
6. R. McLure
7. G. Illingworth
8. I. Labbé

In Instrumentation

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. J. Dunlop
3. R. Bouwens
4. P. Oesch
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. M. Franx
7. I. Labbé
8. G. Illingworth

Citations in the corpus

• Escape of Lyman continuum radiation from local galaxies - Detection of leakage from the young starburst Tol 1247-232 (2013, background): “…likely that galaxies played an important role in the reionization of the universe (e.g. Razoumov & Sommer-Larsen 2010; Bouwens et al. 2012b), we have not yet detected the responsible galaxies since these would be well below current detection thresholds (Bunker et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010).”
• Keck spectroscopy of faint 3 < z < 7 Lyman break galaxies – I. New constraints on cosmic reionization from the luminosity and redshift-dependent fraction of Lyman α emission (2010, methodology): “…these trends, the expected signal of reionization (decreasing the prevalence of LAEs) should be readily apparent in deep spectroscopy of newly discovered z850-band and Y105-band dropouts (e.g. McLure et al. 2010; Oesch et al. 2010; Bunker et al. 2010; Bouwens et al. 2010a; Wilkins et al. 2010a,b).”
• A Redshift-independent Efficiency Model: Star Formation and Stellar Masses in Dark Matter Halos at z ≳ 4 (2018, background): “…of the UV LF have improved over the past ten years, mainly thanks to the installation of the Wide-Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST ; Bunker et al. 2004; Beckwith et al. 2006; Bouwens et al. 2007, 2011; Finkelstein et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010; Schenker et al. 2013).”
• Concordance models of reionization: implications for faint galaxies and escape fraction evolution (2012, background): “The installation of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC-3) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has recently improved the efficiency of searches for faint z & 7 galaxies by more than an order of magnitude (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2010a; McLure et al. 2010; Bunker et al. 2010).”
• A critical analysis of the ultraviolet continuum slopes (β) of high-redshift galaxies: no evidence (yet) for extreme stellar populations at z > 6 (2011, methodology): “…candidate galaxies were all selected from our own reductions of the pubicly available near-infrared WFC3/IR imaging of the HUDF, ERS and HUDF09-2 fields, as described in McLure et al. (2011) (we note that the HUDF WFC3/IR imaging is the same year1, 2009, imaging as utilised in McLure et al. 2010).”
• STAR FORMATION RATES AND STELLAR MASSES OF z = 7–8 GALAXIES FROM IRAC OBSERVATIONS OF THE WFC3/IR EARLY RELEASE SCIENCE AND THE HUDF FIELDS (2009, background): “Small 0.04 mag changes in the WFC3/IR zeropoints (e.g., McLure et al. (2009)) would cause changes of β ≈ 0.17, comparable to the random uncertainties.”
• The UV continua and inferred stellar populations of galaxies at z ~7-9 revealed by the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field 2012 campaign (2012, methodology): “The point is that while both colour–colour selection (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2010a, 2011) and photometric-redshift selection (e.g. McLure et al. 2010, 2011) are sufficiently inclusive to include virtually all plausible star-forming galaxy SEDs at high redshift, photometric scatter can lead to some…”
• z ∼ 7 GALAXIES IN THE HUDF: FIRST EPOCH WFC3/IR RESULTS (2009, background): “The luminosity function (LF) brightens significantly from z ∼ 6 to z ∼ 4 (e.g McLure et al. 2009a; Bouwens et al. 2007; Bouwens & Illingworth 2006; Oesch et al. 2007; Yoshida et al. 2006; Ouchi et al. 2004; Steidel et al. 1999), following M∗(z) = −21.02 + 0.36∗ (z−3.8) (Bouwens et al. 2008), and…”
• DISCOVERY OF z ∼ 8 GALAXIES IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD FROM ULTRA-DEEP WFC3/IR OBSERVATIONS (2009, methodology): “Adopting the z ∼ 6 i-dropout LF from Bouwens et al. (2007: see also McLure et al. 2009) and assuming no evolution to higher redshift, we predict 20±6 Y105-dropouts in our WFC3/IR field.”
• New Measurements of the Ionizing Ultraviolet Background over 2 < z < 5 and Implications for Hydrogen Reionization (2013, background): “…> 6 indicate that the global star formation rate density declines steeply with redshift over 6 < z < 12 (e.g., Ouchi et al. 2009; Castellano et al. 2010; Bunker et al. 2010; Bouwens et al. 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012; Oesch et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010, 2013; Schenker et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013).”
• The birth of a galaxy – II. The role of radiation pressure (2012, background): “The most luminous of these “reionisers” have been detected at 6 < z < 10 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) and from ground-based campaigns (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2008; McLure et al. 2010; Finkelstein et al. 2010; Ouchi et al. 2010).”
• The z = 9-10 galaxy population in the Hubble Frontier Fields and CLASH surveys: the z = 9 luminosity function and further evidence for a smooth decline in ultraviolet luminosity density at z≥ 8 (2016, methodology): “…routine to assemble catalogues of galaxies out to z ' 8, either via colour-colour selection or spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting (e.g. McLure et al. 2010, 2011; Bouwens et al. 2011; review by Dunlop 2013), with the current frontier of observations now at z ∼ 9− 10 (e.g. McLure et al.…”
• Faint high-redshift AGN in the Chandra deep field south: the evolution of the AGN luminosity function and black hole demography (2011, methodology): “We also considered 330 z > 6 galaxy candidates from the lists of Bouwens et al. (2006), Castellano et al. (2010), McLure et al. (2010), McLure et al. (2011), Bouwens et al. (2011), which are not included in the above two lists.”
• Rest-frame ultraviolet-to-optical spectral characteristics of extremely metal-poor and metal-free galaxies (2011, background): “Taniguchi et al. (2010) have presented a robust sample of galaxies at z ∼ 8 detected with HST/WFC3 (Bouwens et al. 2010b; Bunker et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010; Yan et al. 2010; Finkelstein et al. 2010).”
• A deep ALMA image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2016, methodology): “The key dataset which defined the area that we aimed to cover with the ALMA 1.3-mm mosaic is the ultra-deep nearinfrared imaging of the HUDF obtained with WFC3/IR on HST via the UDF09 (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010; Oesch et al. 2010; Finkelstein et al. 2010, 2012; Bunker c© ???”
• THE CANADA–FRANCE HIGH-z QUASAR SURVEY: NINE NEW QUASARS AND THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION AT REDSHIFT 6 (2009, background): “Bouwens et al. (2009) and McLure et al. (2009) show the faint end evolution from z = 6 to z = 8 is less than a factor of 10.”