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Published September 1, 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

A Spectroscopic Search for Leaking Lyman Continuum at z ~ 0.7

Abstract

We present the results of rest-frame, UV slitless spectroscopic observations of a sample of 32 z ~ 0.7 Lyman break galaxy (LBG) analogs in the COSMOS field. The spectroscopic search was performed with the Solar Blind Channel on the Hubble Space Telescope. We report the detection of leaking Lyman continuum (LyC) radiation from an active galactic nucleus-starburst composite. While we find no direct detections of LyC emission in the remainder of our sample, we achieve individual lower limits (3σ) of the observed non-ionizing UV-to-LyC flux density ratios, f -ν (1500 Å)/f _ν(830 Å) of 20 to 204 (median of 73.5) and 378.7 for the stack. Assuming an intrinsic Lyman break of 3.4 and an intergalactic medium transmission of LyC photons along the line of sight to the galaxy of 85%, we report an upper limit for the relative escape fraction in individual galaxies of 0.02-0.19 and a stacked 3σ upper limit of 0.01. We find no indication of a relative escape fraction near unity as seen in some LBGs at z ~ 3. Our UV spectra achieve the deepest limits to date at any redshift for the escape fraction in individual sources. The contrast between these z ~ 0.7 low escape fraction LBG analogs with z ~ 3 LBGs suggests that either the processes conducive to high f esc are not being selected for in the z 1 samples or the average escape fraction is decreasing from z ~ 3 to z ~ 1. We discuss possible mechanisms that could affect the escape of LyC photons

Additional Information

© 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Received 2010 March 17; accepted 2010 July 7; published 2010 August 11. We thank Mark Dickinson and Colin Borys for their contributions to this work and the anonymous referee for their constructive comments which added to the clarity of this paper. The research described in this paper was carried out, in part, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and observations obtained at the Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory as part of a continuing collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, NASA /JPL, and Cornell University. Support for programs HST-GO 11236 was provided by NASA through grants from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with program 11236.

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August 22, 2023
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