HETDEX Public Source Catalog 1—Stacking 50,000 Lyman Alpha Emitters

Dustin Davis, Karl Gebhardt, Erin Mentuch Cooper, William P. Bowman, Barbara Garcia Castanheira, John Chisholm, Robin Ciardullo, Maximilian Fabricius, Daniel J. Farrow, Steven L. Finkelstein, Caryl Gronwall, Eric Gawiser, Gary J. Hill, Ulrich Hopp, Lindsay R. House, Donghui Jeong, Wolfram Kollatschny, Eiichiro Komatsu, Chenxu Liu, Maja Lujan NiemeyerAlberto Saldana-Lopez, Shun Saito, Donald P. Schneider, Jan Snigula, Sarah Tuttle, Laurel H. Weiss, Lutz Wisotzki, Gregory Zeimann

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Abstract

We describe the ensemble properties of the 1.9 < z < 3.5 Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) found in the HETDEX survey’s first public data release, HETDEX Public Source Catalog 1. Stacking the low-resolution (R ∼ 800) spectra greatly increases the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), revealing spectral features otherwise hidden by noise, and we show that the stacked spectrum is representative of an average member of the set. The flux-limited, Lyα S/N restricted stack of 50,000 HETDEX LAEs shows the ensemble biweight average z ∼ 2.6 LAE to be a blue (UV continuum slope ∼ −2.4 and E(B - V) < 0.1), moderately bright (M UV ∼ −19.7) star-forming galaxy with strong Lyα emission (log L Lyα ∼ 42.8 and W λ (Lyα) ∼ 114 Å), and potentially significant leakage of ionizing radiation. The rest-frame UV light is dominated by a young, metal-poor stellar population with an average age of 5-15 Myr and metallicity of 0.2-0.3

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number209
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume954
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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