Nakajima, K;
Fletcher, T;
Ellis, R;
Robertson, BE;
Iwata, I;
(2018)
The Mean Ultraviolet Spectrum of a Representative Sample of Faint z~3 Lyman Alpha Emitters.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
, 477
(2)
pp. 2098-2111.
10.1093/mnras/sty750.
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Abstract
We discuss the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) emission line spectra of a large (∼100) sample of low luminosity redshift z ∼ 3.1 Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) drawn from a Subaru imaging survey in the SSA22 survey field. Our earlier work based on smaller samples indicated that such sources have high [O III]/[O II] line ratios possibly arising from a hard ionizing spectrum that may be typical of similar sources in the reionization era. With optical spectra secured from VLT/VIMOS, we re-examine the nature of the ionizing radiation in a larger sample using the strength of the high ionization diagnostic emission lines of CIII]λ1909, CIVλ1549, HEIIλ1640, and O III]λλ1661, 1666 Å in various stacked subsets. Our analysis confirms earlier suggestions of a correlation between the strength of Ly α and CIII] emission and we find similar trends with broad-band UV luminosity and rest-frame UV colour. Using various diagnostic line ratios and our stellar photoionization models, we determine both the gas phase metallicity and hardness of the ionization spectrum characterized by ξion – the number of Lyman continuum photons per UV luminosity. We confirm our earlier suggestion that ξion is significantly larger for LAEs than for continuum-selected Lyman break galaxies, particularly for those LAEs with the faintest UV luminosities. We briefly discuss the implications for cosmic reionization if the metal-poor intensely star-forming systems studied here are representative examples of those at much higher redshift.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Mean Ultraviolet Spectrum of a Representative Sample of Faint z~3 Lyman Alpha Emitters |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/sty750 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty750 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is the published version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | galaxies: evolution, galaxies: high-redshift |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10045580 |
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