The Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS) and the Brightest High-z Galaxies

Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations. We present here the z ~ 6 - 8 candidate high-redshift galaxies from the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS),...

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Published in:arXiv.org 2018-04
Main Authors: Salmon, Brett, Coe, Dan, Bradley, Larry, Bouwens, Rychard, Bradac, Marusa, Kuang-Han, Huang, Oesch, Pascal, Stark, Daniel, Keren, Sharon, Trenti, Michele, Avila, Roberto J, Ogaz, Sara, Andrade-Santos, Felipe, Carrasco, Daniela, Cerny, Catherine, Dawson, William, Frye, Brenda L, Hoag, Austin, Traci Lin Johnson, Jones, Christine, Lam, Daniel, Lovisari, Lorenzo, Mainali, Ramesh, Past, Matt, Paterno-Mahler, Rachel, Peterson, Avery, Riess, Adam, Rodney, Steven A, Ryan, Russel, Sendra-Server, Irene, Strolger, Lou, Umetsu, Keiichi, Vulcani, Benedetta, Zitrin, Adi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Galactic clusters
Galaxies
Gravitational lenses
Hubble Space Telescope
Ionization
Observatories
Photometry
Red shift
Space telescopes
Star & galaxy formation
Stars & galaxies
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Summary:Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations. We present here the z ~ 6 - 8 candidate high-redshift galaxies from the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS), a Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope survey of 41 massive galaxy clusters spanning an area of ~200 arcmin^2. These clusters were selected to be excellent lenses and we find similar high-redshift sample sizes and magnitude distributions as CLASH. We discover 321 candidate galaxies with photometric redshifts between z ~ 6 to z ~ 8, including extremely bright objects with H-band magnitudes of m_AB ~ 23 mag. As a sample, the observed (lensed) magnitudes of these galaxies are among the brightest known at z> 6, comparable to much wider, blank-field surveys. RELICS demonstrates the efficiency of using strong gravitational lenses to produce high-redshift samples in the epoch of reionization. These brightly observed galaxies are excellent targets for follow-up study with current and future observatories, including the James Webb Space Telescope.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1710.08930