CLASH: THREE STRONGLY LENSED IMAGES OF A CANDIDATE z ≈ 11 GALAXY

By D. Coe, A. Zitrin, M. Carrasco, X. Shu, Wei Zheng, M. Postman, L. Bradley, A. Koekemoer, R. Bouwens, T. Broadhurst and 13 more. 2012

244 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a candidate for the most distant galaxy known to date with a photometric redshift of z = 10.7+0.6−0.4 (95% confidence limits; with z < 9.5 galaxies of known types ruled out at 7.2σ). This J-dropout Lyman break galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, was discovered as part of the Cluster Lensing and Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). We observe three magnified images of this galaxy due to strong gravitational lensing by the galaxy cluster MACSJ0647.7+7015 at z = 0.591. The images are magnified by factors of ∼80, 7, and 2, with the brighter two observed at ∼26th magnitude AB (∼0.15 μJy) in the WFC3/IR F160W filter (∼1.4–1.7 μm) where they are detected at ≳12σ. All three images are also confidently detected at ≳6σ in F140W (∼1.2–1.6 μm), dropping out of detection from 15 lower wavelength Hubble Space Telescope filters (∼0.2–1.4 μm), and lacking bright detections in Spitzer/IRAC 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm imaging (∼3.2–5.0 μm). We rule out a broad range of possible lower redshift interlopers, including some previously published as high-redshift candidates. Our high-redshift conclusion is more conservative than if we had neglected a Bayesian photometric redshift prior. Given CLASH observations of 17 high-mass clusters to date, our discoveries of MACS0647-JD at z ∼ 10.8 and MACS1149-JD at z ∼ 9.6 are consistent with a lensed luminosity function extrapolated from lower redshifts. This would suggest that low-luminosity galaxies could have reionized the universe. However, given the significant uncertainties based on only two galaxies, we cannot yet rule out the sharp drop-off in number counts at z ≳ 10 suggested by field searches.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b14d6d65ab91e441c30ae646b7f171ab5576ab69

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

Citations in the corpus

• Mass and magnification maps for the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields clusters: implications for high-redshift studies (2014, background): “…on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society at U niversity of D urham on N ovem ber 5, 2015 http://m nras.oxfordjournals.org/ Bouwens et al. 2009; Coe et al. 2013), and offers the tantalizing possibility of measuring the geometry of the Universe through the accurate determination of…”
• Full-data Results of Hubble Frontier Fields: UV Luminosity Functions at z ∼ 6–10 and a Consistent Picture of Cosmic Reionization (2017, methodology): “Our results support a non-accelerated decline of ρUV toward high redshifts in the case of Mtrunc = −15.0 (see also McLeod et al. 2016).”
• The bright end of the galaxy luminosity function at z≃7: before the onset of mass quenching? (2013, background): “…galaxies analogously to those in the HUDF, the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH, Postman et al. 2012; Zheng et al. 2012; Coe et al. 2013) uses foreground clusters to detect gravitationally lensed galaxies, and the Brightest of the Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG, Trenti et…”
• ARE ULTRA-FAINT GALAXIES AT z = 6–8 RESPONSIBLE FOR COSMIC REIONIZATION? COMBINED CONSTRAINTS FROM THE HUBBLE FRONTIER FIELDS CLUSTERS AND PARALLELS (2015, background): “Small sizes around 0.1′′have also been observed in lensed galaxies by Coe et al. (2013); Zitrin et al. (2014).”
• New redshift z ≃ 9 galaxies in the Hubble Frontier Fields: implications for early evolution of the UV luminosity density (2014, methodology): “G A ] 1 1 D in the HUDF12 programme to provide the first meaningful sample of galaxies at z ' 9 (Ellis et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013) and was also successfully exploited in the CLASH Treasury Programme to uncover examples of gravitationally-lensed galaxies at z ' 9.6 (Zheng et al. 2012) and z ' 10”
• THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY REST-FRAME ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OVER THE FIRST TWO BILLION YEARS (2014, background): “…et al. 2010; Finkelstein et al. 2010, 2012b; McLure et al. 2010; Oesch et al. 2010b, 2012; Yan et al. 2012), with a few candidate galaxies having likely redshifts as high as 10 (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2011a, 2015; Coe et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013, 2014).”
• GALAXY PROPERTIES AND UV ESCAPE FRACTIONS DURING THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION: RESULTS FROM THE RENAISSANCE SIMULATIONS (2016, background): “The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) 2009 and 2012 campaigns (Ellis et al. 2013) can probe galaxies with rest-frame UV magnitude as low as approximately −18at z7 and as distant as z;11 (McLure et al. 2011; Zheng et al. 2012; Coe et al. 2013; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2016).”
• HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE COMBINED STRONG AND WEAK LENSING ANALYSIS OF THE CLASH SAMPLE: MASS AND MAGNIFICATION MODELS AND SYSTEMATIC UNCERTAINTIES (2014, methodology): “We used as constraints the secure identification listed in Coe et al. (2013), as seen in Table 2 here.”
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report (2015, background): “Recent observations have identified at least 3 candidate objects at z > 9 (Bouwens et al. 2011, Zheng et al. 2012, Coe et al. 2013).”
• The Frontier Fields: Survey Design and Initial Results (2016, background): “Very few candidates at z ∼ 9 and above were identified (Ellis et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013; Zheng et al. 2012; Coe et al. 2013), resulting in vigorous debate about how quickly the first star-formation proceeded and how many z > 9 objects future JWST might see (Oesch et al. 2012).”
• Spectroscopic detection of C iv λ1548 in a galaxy at z = 7.045: implications for the ionizing spectra of reionization-era galaxies (2015, background): “…photometrically-selected to lie between' 0.5−1 Gyr after the Big Bang (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2014b) and the first small samples of galaxies within the first 0.5 Gyr of cosmic time (e.g., Zheng et al. 2012; Ellis et al. 2013; Coe et al. 2013; Atek et al. 2015; Zitrin et al. 2014; Oesch et al. 2014).”
• The Dearth of z ∼ 10 Galaxies in All HST Legacy Fields—The Rapid Evolution of the Galaxy Population in the First 500 Myr (2017, methodology): “…(HST ) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) over the last few years, the exploration of galaxies has now reached z ∼ 10 − 12, less than 500 Myr after the Big Bang (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2011a, 2016b; Ellis et al. 2013; Coe et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2014, 2016; McLeod et al. 2016; Ishigaki et al. 2017).”