2024/01/11 by Shuqi Fu, Linhua Jiang, Fu, Shuqi +7
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Real-time simulation and control systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.05920
openalex publication_date 2024/01/11 · openalex created_date 2024/01/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a study of a sample of 45 spectroscopically confirmed, UV luminous galaxies at z∼ 6. They were selected as bright Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) using deep multi-band optical images in more than 2 deg2 of the sky, and subsequently identified via their strong Lyα emission. The majority of these LBGs span an absolute UV magnitude range from -22.0 to -20.5 mag with Lyα equivalent width (EW) between ∼10 and ∼200 Å, representing the most luminous galaxies at z∼ 6 in terms of both UV continuum emission and Lyα line emission. We model the SEDs of 10 LBGs that have deep infrared observations from HST, JWST, and/or Spitzer, and find that they have a wide range of stellar masses and ages. They also have high star-formation rates ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds of Solar mass per year. Five of the LBGs have JWST or HST images and four of them show compact morphology in these images, including one that is roughly consistent with a point source, suggesting that UV luminous galaxies at this redshift are generally compact. The fraction of our photometrically selected LBGs with strong Lyα emission (EW>25 Å) is about 0.2, which is consistent with previous results and supports a moderate evolution of the IGM opacity at the end of cosmic reionization. Using deep X-ray images, we do not find evidence of strong AGN activity in these galaxies, but our constraint is loose and we are not able to rule out the possibility of any weak AGN activity.