Three Lyman-alpha Emitters at z approx 6: Early GMOS/Gemini Data from the GLARE Project

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  • 17 December 2003
Abstract
We report spectroscopic detection of three z \sim 6 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies, in the vicinity of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, from the early data of the Gemini Lyman-alpha at Reionisation Era (GLARE) project. Two objects, GLARE#3001 (z =5.79) and GLARE#3011 (z =5.94), are new detections and are fainter in z' (z'_AB = 26.37 and 27.15) than any continuum-selected objects previously detected in Lyman-alpha. A third object, GLARE#1042 (z =5.83) has previously been detected in line emission from the ground; we report here a new spectroscopic continuum detection. Gemini/GMOS-S spectra of these objects, obtained using nod & shuffle, are presented together with a discussion of their photometric properties. All three objects were selected for spectroscopy via the i-drop Lyman Break technique, the two new detections from the GOODS v1.0 imaging data. The red i'-z' colors and high equivalent widths of these objects suggest a high-confidence z>5 Lyman-alpha identification of the emission lines. This brings the total number of known z>5 galaxies within 9 arcmin of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to four, of which three are at the same redshift (z=5.8 within 2000 km s^{-1}), providing good evidence for the existence of a large-scale structure at this redshift.

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