Stellar Populations of Lyman-alpha Emitting Galaxies in the HETDEX Survey I: An Analysis of LAEs in the GOODS-N Field

• Main Authors: McCarron, Adam P, Finkelstein, Steven L, Ortiz, Oscar A. Chavez, Davis, Dustin, Cooper, Erin Mentuch, Jung, Intae, White, Delaney R, Leung, Gene C. K, Gebhardt, Karl, Acquaviva, Viviana, Bowman, William P, Ciardullo, Robin, Gawiser, Eric, Gronwall, Caryl, Hill, Gary J, Kollatschny, Wolfram, Landriau, Martin, Liu, Chenxu, Mock, Daniel N, Sanchez, Ariel G
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 02-08-2022
• Subjects: Physics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2208.01660

We present the results of a stellar-population analysis of Lyman-alpha
emitting galaxies (LAES) in GOODS-N at 1.9 < z < 3.5 spectroscopically
identified by the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). We
provide a method for connecting emission-line detections from the blind
spectroscopic survey to imaging counterparts, a crucial tool needed as HETDEX
builds a massive database of ~1 million Lyman-alpha detections. Using
photometric data spanning as many as 11 filters covering 0.4-4.5 microns from
the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, we study the objects' global
properties and explore which properties impact the strength of Lyman-alpha
emission. We measure a median stellar mass of 0.8 (^+2.9_-0.5) x 10^9 Msol and
conclude that the physical properties of HETDEX spectroscopically-selected LAEs
are comparable to LAEs selected by previous deep narrow band studies. We find
that stellar mass and star formation rate correlate strongly with the
Lyman-alpha equivalent width. We then use a known sample of z>7 LAEs to perform
a proto-study of predicting Lyman-alpha emission from galaxies in the Epoch of
Reionization, finding agreement at the 1-sigma level between prediction and
observation for the majority of strong emitters.