Search for z~6.96 Ly-alpha emitters with Magellan/IMACS in the COSMOS field

Abstract

We report a search for z~6.96 Ly-alpha emitters (LAEs) using a Narrow-Band filter, centered at 9680 Angstroms, with the IMACS instrument on the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. We obtain a sample of 6 Ly-alpha emitter candidates of luminosity ~10^42 erg/s in a total area of 465 square arcmin corresponding to a comoving volume of ~ 72000 Mpc^3. From this result, we derive a Ly-alpha luminosity function (LF) at z~6.96 and compare our sample with the only z~6.96 Ly-alpha emitter spectroscopically confirmed to date (Iye et al. 2006). We find no evolution between the z=5.7 and z~7 Ly-alpha luminosity functions, if a majority of our candidates are confirmed. Spectroscopic confirmation for this sample will enable more robust conclusions.

Accepted to ApJ

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• What do observations of the Lyman-alpha fraction tell us about reionization?
• GTC Observations of an Overdense Region of LAEs at z=6.5
• Design for the First Narrowband Filter for the Dark Energy Camera: Optimizing the LAGER Survey for z ~ 7 Galaxies
• A Search for z=7.3 Lyα Emitters behind Gravitationally Lensing Clusters
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• Lyman break and UV-selected galaxies at $z\sim 1$ I. Stellar populations from ALHAMBRA survey
• Subaru FOCAS survey of z=7-7.1 Lyα emitters: a test for z >~ 7 Lyα photometric luminosity functions
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