The Lyman Continuum Escape Fraction of Galaxies and AGN in the GOODS Fields

2020/04/10 by Brent M. Smith, Rogier A. Windhorst, Seth H. Cohen +20
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Physics #Spectral line #Stars #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8811

36 pages, 17 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. v1 abstract latex errors corrected, minor changes to table 5, orcid ID corrected for one author

arxiv created 2020/04/10 · openalex publication_date 2020/06/30 · arxiv updated 2020/07/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Abstract We present our analysis of the Lyman continuum (LyC) emission and escape fraction of 111 spectroscopically verified galaxies with and without active galactic nuclei (AGN) from 2.26 < z < 4.3. We extended our ERS sample from Smith et al. with 64 galaxies in the GOODS North and South fields using WFC3/UVIS F225W, F275W, and F336W mosaics we independently drizzled using the HDUV, CANDELS, and UVUDF data. Among the 17 AGN from the 111 galaxies, one provided a LyC detection in F275W at = 23.19 mag (signal-to-noise ratio, S/N, ≃ 133) and GALEX NUV at = 23.77 mag (S/N ≃ 13). We simultaneously fit SDSS and Chandra spectra of this AGN to an accretion disk and Comptonization model, and find values of and . For the remaining 110 galaxies, we stack image cutouts that capture their LyC emission using the F225W, F275W, and F336W data of the GOODS and ERS samples, and both combined, as well as subsamples of galaxies with and without AGN, and all galaxies. We find the stack of 17 AGN dominate the LyC production from ≃ 2.3–4.3 by a factor of ∼10 compared to all 94 galaxies without AGN. While the IGM of the early universe may have been reionized mostly by massive stars, there is evidence that a significant portion of the ionizing energy came from AGN.

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