SILVERRUSH. VIII. Spectroscopic Identifications of Early Large-scale Structures with Protoclusters over 200 Mpc at z ~ 6–7: Strong Associations of Dusty Star-forming Galaxies

Abstract

We have obtained three-dimensional maps of the universe in ~200 × 200 × 80 comoving Mpc^3 (cMpc^3) volumes each at z = 5.7 and 6.6 based on a spectroscopic sample of 179 galaxies that achieves ≳80% completeness down to the Lyα luminosity of log(L_(Lyα)/[erg s^(−1)]) = 43.0, based on our Keck and Gemini observations and the literature. The maps reveal filamentary large-scale structures and two remarkable overdensities made out of at least 44 and 12 galaxies at z = 5.692 (z57OD) and z = 6.585 (z66OD), respectively, making z66OD the most distant overdensity spectroscopically confirmed to date, with >10 spectroscopically confirmed galaxies. We compare spatial distributions of submillimeter galaxies at z ≃ 4–6 with our z = 5.7 galaxies forming the large-scale structures, and detect a 99.97% signal of cross-correlation, indicative of a clear coincidence of dusty star-forming galaxy and dust-unobscured galaxy formation at this early epoch. The galaxies in z57OD and z66OD are actively forming stars with star-formation rates (SFRs) ≳5 times higher than the main sequence, and particularly the SFR density in z57OD is 10 times higher than the cosmic average at the redshift (a.k.a. the Madau-Lilly plot). Comparisons with numerical simulations suggest that z57OD and z66OD are protoclusters that are progenitors of the present-day clusters with halo masses of ~10^(14) M_⊙.

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