Thursday, February 4, 3:30 p.m.
2015 McPherson Laboratory

The Physical Properties of Lyman-alpha Emitters from z=2 to 3

Caryl Gronwall
Pennsylvania State University

Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) are low-mass, nearly dust-free objects that represent galaxies "in the act" of formation. We believe that LAEs at redshifts of 2 to 3 are the progenitors of present-day L* galaxies. We have used the Mosaic camera of the CTIO 4-m telescope to conduct a deep, narrow-band survey of Ly-alpha Emitting Galaxies (LAEs) in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South over the redshift ranges 3.08 < z < 3.15 and 2.04 < z < 2.08. Our survey covers 0.28 square degrees down to a limiting line flux of about 1.5E-17 ergs/cm2/s at z=3.1. Our LAE sample now consists of several hundred candidate line-emitters. By combining our narrow-band data with archival broadband photometry from MUSYC (the Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile), we have been able to determine the photometric properties of these samples including their luminosity functions, equivalent widths, colors, star-formation rates, and dust properties of these objects as well as the evolution of these properties from z=3 to 2. We have also measured the stellar populations using the combined optical and infrared photometry from archival Spitzer data as well as their morphological properties using Hubble Space Telescope imaging.