Abstract
We present the detection of 34 Lyα emission-line galaxy candidates in a 80 × 80 × 60 comoving Mpc region surrounding the known z = 2.38 galaxy cluster J2143-4423. The space density of Lyα emitters is comparable to that found by Steidel et al. when targeting a cluster at redshift 3.09, which is a factor of 5.8 ± 2.5 greater than that found by field samples at similar redshifts. The distribution of these galaxy candidates contains several 5-10 Mpc scale voids. We compare our observations with mock catalogs derived from the VIRGO consortium ΛCDM n-body simulations. Fewer than 1% of the mock catalogs contain voids as large as we observe. Our observations thus tentatively suggest that the galaxy distribution at redshift 2.38 contains larger voids than predicted by current models. Three of the candidate galaxies and one previously discovered galaxy have the large luminosities and extended morphologies of "Lyα blobs."
Export citation and abstract BibTeX RIS
Footnotes
- *
Based on observations obtained at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a division of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.