Journal article
The luminosity function at z 8 from 97 Y-Band dropouts: Inferences about reionization
KB Schmidt, T Treu, M Trenti, LD Bradley, BC Kelly, PA Oesch, BW Holwerda, JM Shull, M Stiavelli
Astrophysical Journal | Published : 2014
Abstract
We present the largest search to date for Y-band dropout galaxies (z 8 Lyman break galaxies, LBGs) based on 350 arcmin2 of Hubble Space Telescope observations in the V, Y, J, and H bands from the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey. In addition to previously published data, the BoRG13 data set presented here includes approximately 50 arcmin2 of new data and deeper observations of two previous BoRG pointings, from which we present 9 new z 8 LBG candidates, bringing the total number of BoRG Y-band dropouts to 38 with 25.5 ≤ mJ ≤ 27.6 (AB system). We introduce a new Bayesian formalism for estimating the galaxy luminosity function, which does not require binning (and thus smearing) of..
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Awarded by Seventh Framework Programme
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the HST BoRG grants GO-11700, 12572, and 12905. This paper is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute. B.K. acknowledges support from the Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution, a multicampus research program funded by the University of California Office of Research. Support for this work was provided by the European Commission through the Marie Curie Career Integration Fellowship PCIG12-GA-2012-333749 (M.T.).