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

By D. Stark, Richard S. Ellis, K. Chiu, M. Ouchi, A. Bunker. 2010

354 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the first results of a new Keck spectroscopic survey of UV faint Lyman break galaxies in the redshift range 3 1.9 with respect to the predicted z ≃ 7 value, a result which, if confirmed with future surveys, would suggest an increase in the neutral fraction by this epoch. Given the abundant supply of z and Y drops now available from deep Hubble WFC3/IR surveys, we show it will soon be possible to significantly improve estimates of the Lyα fraction using optical and near-infrared multi-object spectrographs, thereby extending the study conducted in this paper to 7 ≲ z ≲ 8.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f8720c2961c4353cce1d39709a3e4fe65e030187

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

In Instrumentation

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

Citations in the corpus

• COMPLETING THE CENSUS OF Lyα EMITTERS AT THE REIONIZATION EPOCH (2011, methodology): “Figure 12 of Stark et al. (2010) shows an apparent deficiency in LAEs with low EW0 and low UV luminosity, though it could be caused by their spectroscopic detection limit.”
• A SPECTROSCOPIC REDSHIFT MEASUREMENT FOR A LUMINOUS LYMAN BREAK GALAXY AT z = 7.730 USING KECK/MOSFIRE (2015, background): “…rate of spectroscopic follow-up surveys is likely caused by a decreased fraction of galaxies showing strong Lyα emission due to an increased neutral fraction in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) at z > 6 (Stark et al. 2010, 2011; Treu et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2012, 2014; Pentericci et al. 2014).”
• New Measurements of the Ionizing Ultraviolet Background over 2 < z < 5 and Implications for Hydrogen Reionization (2013, background): “…the escape fraction may continue increasing with redshift at z > 3 comes from an observed increase with redshift in the fraction of LBGs showing Lyα emission (Stark et al. 2010, 2011) combined with an anticorrelation between Lyα fraction and the covering fraction of H i gas (Jones et al. 2012).”
• UV LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 4 TO z ∼ 10: 10,000 GALAXIES FROM HST LEGACY FIELDS (2014, background): “In addition, the spectroscopic follow-up done on high-redshift samples reveal very small numbers of lower redshift contaminants (e.g., Vanzella et al. 2009; Stark et al. 2010).”
• ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS FROM 132 z ∼ 7 AND z ∼ 8 LYMAN-BREAK GALAXIES IN THE ULTRA-DEEP HUDF09 AND WIDE-AREA EARLY RELEASE SCIENCE WFC3/IR OBSERVATIONS (2010, background): “…are generally quite robust in identifying star-forming galaxies at z∼3-7 (e.g., Steidel et al. 1996, 2003; Popesso et al. 2009; Vanzella et al. 2009; Stark et al. 2010) though admittedly spectroscopic follow-up of the very faintest sources at z ≥ 4 has been ambiguous since only those sources with…”
• UV-CONTINUUM SLOPES OF >4000 z ∼ 4–8 GALAXIES FROM THE HUDF/XDF, HUDF09, ERS, CANDELS-SOUTH, AND CANDELS-NORTH FIELDS (2013, background): “…median β = −2.3 measurement from Jiang et al. (2013) for their sample of z ∼ 6.6 LAEs (although the intrinsic luminosities of the Jiang et al. 2013 LAE sample are clearly larger, one would expect a Lyα-emitting population to be bluer on average than the typical luminous galaxy: Stark et al. 2010).”
• Ultraviolet emission lines in young low-mass galaxies at z ≃ 2: physical properties and implications for studies at z > 7 (2014, background): “With observations indicating thatLyα becomes more common in galaxies at earlier times over the redshift range3 ∼< z ∼< 6 (Stark et al. 2010, Stark et al. 2011), we may expect large equivalent width CIII] emission to become ubiqitous among the galaxy population atz ∼> 6.”
• A critical analysis of the ultraviolet continuum slopes (β) of high-redshift galaxies: no evidence (yet) for extreme stellar populations at z > 6 (2011, background): “However, this luminosity dependence takes the average value of UV slope from〈β〉 ≃ −1.3 at MUV = −22.2 to 〈β〉 ≃ −1.9 at MUV = −17.2, and is attributed by Bouwens et al. (2009) as being primarily a resultof decreasing dust obscuration with decreasing UV luminosity(see also Stark et al. 2010).”
• RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (2019, background): “…Observed High-Redshift Candidates Spectroscopic redshift confirmations based on Lymanα detections have proven increasingly difficult beyond z > 6 (Stark et al. 2010; Bradač et al. 2012; Schenker et al. 2014; Schmidt et al. 2016; Hoag et al. 2019; Mason et al. 2019), likely due primarily to…”
• KECK SPECTROSCOPY OF 3 < z < 7 FAINT LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES: THE IMPORTANCE OF NEBULAR EMISSION IN UNDERSTANDING THE SPECIFIC STAR FORMATION RATE AND STELLAR MASS DENSITY (2012, methodology): “Fortunately, by virtue of our deep Keck spectroscopic survey (Stark et al. 2010, Stark et al. 2011, Jones et al. 2012, Schenker et al. 2012) and our nebular+stellar population synthesis code (Robertson et al. 2010), we can use the availability of HST-Spitzer SEDs to make progress in addressing this…”
• The Universe Is Reionizing at z ∼ 7: Bayesian Inference of the IGM Neutral Fraction Using Lyα Emission from Galaxies (2017, methodology): “…reionization at z > 6: recent observations show a declining fraction of Lyα emitters in the LBG population with redshift (e.g. Fontana et al. 2010; Stark et al. 2010; Caruana et al. 2012; Treu et al. 2013; Caruana et al. 2014; Faisst et al. 2014; Tilvi et al. 2014; Schenker et al. 2014;…”
• NEW CONSTRAINTS ON COSMIC REIONIZATION FROM THE 2012 HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD CAMPAIGN (2013, neutral): “An alternate approach is therefore to select a galaxy sample independently of the Lyman-α line (or at least as independently as possible) and determine how the fraction of these galaxies with strong Lyman-α lines evolves (Stark et al. 2010).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, background): “Recent spectroscopic campaigns have begun to confirm that many of these sources do indeed lie atz & 7 (e.g., Iye et al. 2006; Stark et al. 2010; Lehnert et al. 2010; Fontana et al. 2010; Vanzella et al. 2011; Schenker et al. 2011; Pentericci et al. 2011; Ono et al. 2011).”
• LINE-EMITTING GALAXIES BEYOND A REDSHIFT OF 7: AN IMPROVED METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE EVOLVING NEUTRALITY OF THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM (2014, methodology): “Stark et al. (2010) showed that within this subset, strong Lyα emitting galaxies have bluer UV continuum slopes than their non-emitting counterparts, but as there existed no high-quality infrared photometry in the GOODS fields at this time, it was necessary to parametrize distributions at higher…”
• THE HETDEX PILOT SURVEY. II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE Lyα ESCAPE FRACTION FROM THE ULTRAVIOLET SLOPE AND LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OF 1.9 (2010, result): “The observed behavior is also consistent with the results of Stark et al. (2010), who find the fraction of LBGs showing high EW Lyα emission to roughly double from z = 4 to 6.”
• Lyα Emitting Galaxies as a Probe of Reionisation (2014, background): “…galaxies (or Lyman Break Galaxies, or LBGs)27: The fraction of drop-out galaxies with ‘strong’ Lyα emission lines increases within this redshift range (Stark et al. 2010), which can quantitatively account for the observed non-evolution of the Lyα LFs within that same redshift range (see e.g.…”
• KECK SPECTROSCOPY OF FAINT 3 < z < 8 LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES: EVIDENCE FOR A DECLINING FRACTION OF EMISSION LINE SOURCES IN THE REDSHIFT RANGE 6 < z < 8 (2011, background): “Because of this, an alternative approach for gauging when reionization occurred, introduced by Stark et al. (2010) (hereafter Paper I), is to spectroscopically measure the fraction of Lyα emission within color-selected Lyman Break Galaxy (LBG) populations.”
• Conditions for Reionizing the Universe with a Low Galaxy Ionizing Photon Escape Fraction (2019, background): “Second, there is also evidence from recent observations that the previous evolution of Lyα detectability from Stark et al. (2010), which has been used to invoke large neutral fraction evolution, may need to be revised.”
• Lyα and C iii] emission in z = 7–9 Galaxies: accelerated reionization around luminous star-forming systems? (2016, methodology): “These surveys clearly reveal a rapidly declining Lyα emitter fraction over 6 < z < 8 (e.g., Stark et al. 2010; Fontana et al. 2010; Ono et al. 2012; Pentericci et al. 2014; Tilvi et al. 2014; Schenker et al. 2014), similar to the drop in the abundance of narrowbandselected Lyα emitters over 5.7 < z…”
• REIONIZATION AFTER PLANCK: THE DERIVED GROWTH OF THE COSMIC IONIZING EMISSIVITY NOW MATCHES THE GROWTH OF THE GALAXY UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY (2015, background): “Assuming that the prevalence of Lyα emission in star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 6.5–8 is a simple extrapolation of the observed prevalence at z ∼ 4–6 and any departures from these trends are due to an increasingly neutral IGM at z ∼ 7–8, one can use this technique to quantify the filling factor of ioni”