Introducing the Texas Euclid Survey for Lyα (TESLA) Survey: Initial Study Correlating Galaxy Properties to Lyα Emission

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 952; no. 2; pp. 110 - 128
• Main Authors: Chávez Ortiz, Óscar A., Finkelstein, Steven L., Davis, Dustin, Leung, Gene, Mentuch Cooper, Erin, Bagley, Micaela, Larson, Rebecca, Casey, Caitlin M., McCarron, Adam P., Gebhardt, Karl, Guo, Yuchen, Liu, Chenxu, Laseter, Isaac, Rhodes, Jason, Bender, Ralf, Fabricius, Max, Sánchez, Ariel G., Scarlata, Claudia, Capak, Peter, Zalesky, Lukas, Sanders, David, Szapudi, Istvan, Baxter, Eric, McPartland, Conor, Weaver, John R., Toft, Sune, Mobasher, Bahram, Suzuki, Nao, Chartab, Nima
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia The American Astronomical Society 01-08-2023; IOP Publishing
• Subjects: Astrophysics; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Emission analysis; Emitters; Galaxies; Galaxy distribution; Ionization; Lyman-alpha galaxies; Physical properties; Polls & surveys; Prediction models; Probability distribution functions; Reionization; Spectral energy distribution; Star & galaxy formation; Star formation; Star formation rate; Stars & galaxies; Stellar mass; Surveys; Viruses; United States > US; Texas
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/acc403

We present the Texas Euclid Survey for Ly
α
(TESLA), a spectroscopic survey in the 10 deg
2
of the Euclid North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) field. Using TESLA, we study how the physical properties of Ly
α
emitters (LAEs) correlate with Ly
α
emission to understand the escape of Ly
α
emission from galaxies at redshifts of 2–3.5. We present an analysis of 43 LAEs performed in the NEP field using early data from the TESLA survey. We use Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam imaging in the
grizy
bands, Spitzer/IRAC channels 1 and 2 from the Hawaii 20 deg
2
(H20) survey, and spectra acquired by the Visible Integral-Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) on the Hobby–Eberly Telescope. We perform spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to compute the galaxy properties of 43 LAEs, and study correlations between stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), and dust to the Ly
α
rest-frame equivalent width (
W
Ly
α
). We uncover marginal (1
σ
significance) correlations between stellar mass and
W
Ly
α
, and SFR and
W
Ly
α
, with a Spearman correlation coefficient of −0.
34
−
.14
+
.17
and −0.
37
−
.14
+
.16
, respectively. We show that the
W
Ly
α
distribution of the 43 LAEs is consistent with being drawn from an exponential distribution with an e-folding scale of
W
0
= 150 Å. Once complete the TESLA survey will enable the study of ≳50,000 LAEs to explore more correlations between galaxy properties and
W
Ly
α
. The large sample size will allow the construction of a predictive model for
W
Ly
α
as a function of SED-derived galaxy properties, which could be used to improve Ly
α
-based constraints on reionization.