Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Coma Cluster Progenitor at z ~ 2.2

Abstract

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of a new protocluster in the COSMOS field at $z$ $\sim$ 2.2, COSMOS Cluster 2.2 (CC2.2), originally identified as an overdensity of narrowband selected H$\hat{I}\pm$ emitting candidates. With only two masks of Keck/MOSFIRE near-IR spectroscopy in both $H$ ($\sim$ 1.47-1.81 $\hat{I}¼$m) and $K$ ($\sim$ 1.92-2.40 $\hat{I}¼$m) bands ($\sim$ 1.5 hour each), we confirm 35 unique protocluster members with at least two emission lines detected with S/N $>$ 3. Combined with 12 extra members from the zCOSMOS-deep spectroscopic survey (47 in total), we estimate a mean redshift and a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of $z_{mean}$=2.23224 $\pm$ 0.00101 and $\ddot{I}{ƒ}_{los}$=645 $\pm$ 69 km s${}^{-1}$ for this protocluster, respectively. Assuming virialization and spherical symmetry for the system, we estimate a total mass of $M_{vir}$ $\sim$ $(1-2)\times$10${}^{14}$ $M_{\odot }$ for the structure. We evaluate a number density enhancement of $\hat{I}{´}_g$ $\sim$ 7 for this system and we argue that the structure is likely not fully virialized at $z$ $\sim$ 2.2. However, in a spherical collapse model, $\hat{I}{´}_g$ is expected to grow to a linear matter enhancement of $\sim$ 1.9 by $z$=0, exceeding the collapse threshold of 1.69, and leading to a fully collapsed and virialized Coma-type structure with a total mass of $M_{dyn}$($z$=0) $\sim$ 9.2$\times$10${}^{14}$ $M_{\odot }$ by now. This observationally efficient confirmation suggests that large narrowband emission-line galaxy surveys, when combined with ancillary photometric data, can be used to effectively trace the large-scale structure and protoclusters at a time when they are mostly dominated by star-forming galaxies.