A Survey of Star‐forming Galaxies in the 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 Redshift Desert: Overview

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Abstract
We present the first results of a large-scale survey, using the UV/blue sensitive LRIS-B spectrograph on the Keck I telescope, of galaxies in the redshift interval 1.4=2.20+/-0.32 and `BM' galaxies at =1.70+/-0.34; currently we have spectroscopically confirmed 749 of the former and 114 of the latter. We also present initial results of deep near-IR photometry and spectroscopy, from which we show that z~2 galaxies are significantly redder in their optical/IR colors compared to similarly UV-selected galaxies at z~3, but that the characteristics of their galaxy-scale outflows are quite similar. We illustrate by example the information which can be deduced on the stellar populations, metallicities, and kinematics of `redshift desert' galaxies from easily accessible rest-frame far-UV and rest-frame optical spectra. Far from being hostile to observations, the universe at z~2 is uniquely suited to providing information on the astrophysics of star-forming galaxies and the intergalactic medium, and the relationship between the two [abridged].Comment: To appear in ApJ, April 2004. 16 pages, uses emulateap
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