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Published November 10, 2008 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

The DEEP2 Redshift Survey: Lyα Emitters in the Spectroscopic Database

Abstract

We present the first results of a search for Lyα emitters (LAEs) in the DEEP2 spectroscopic database that uses a search technique that is different from but complementary to traditional narrowband imaging surveys. We have visually inspected ~20% of the available DEEP2 spectroscopic data and have found nine high-quality LAEs with clearly asymmetric line profiles and an additional 10 objects of lower quality, some of which may also be LAEs. Our survey is most sensitive to LAEs at z = 4.4–4.9 and that is indeed where all but one of our high-quality objects are found. We find the number density of our spectroscopically discovered LAEs to be consistent with those found in narrowband imaging searches. The combined, averaged spectrum of our nine high-quality objects is well fit by a two-component model, with a second, lower amplitude component redshifted by ~420 km s^(−1) with respect to the primary Lyα line, consistent with large-scale outflows from these objects. We conclude by discussing the advantages and future prospects of blank-sky spectroscopic surveys for high-z LAEs.

Additional Information

© 2008. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 October 12; accepted 2008 July 11. Based on data obtained at theW.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community; we are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. We thank Alison Coil and Sandy Faber for useful discussions, and all the members of the DEEP2 team for their contributions to making possible the data used here. We thank Jerzy Sawicki for a careful reading of the manuscript and many useful comments. Parts of the analysis presented here made use of the Perl Data Language (PDL) that has been developed by K. Glazebrook, J. Brinchmann, J. Cerney, C. DeForest, D. Hunt, T. Jenness, T. Luka, R. Schwebel, and C. Soeller, which can be obtained from http://pdl.perl.org. PDL provides a high-level numerical functionality for the Perl scripting language (Glazebrook & Economou, 1997). This work was supported in part by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, NSF grants AST 00-71198 and AST 05-07483 funding from the NASA/STScI and the Canadian Space Agency, and by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Attached Files

Published - Sawicki_2008_ApJ_687_884.pdf

Accepted Version - 0807.1890.pdf

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August 22, 2023
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