The HiZELS/UKIRT large area survey for bright Lyman-alpha emitters at z~9

TL;DR

This large-area survey at z~9 searched for bright Lyman-alpha emitters, found none, and set new upper limits on their space density, challenging some high-redshift galaxy formation models.

Contribution

It is the largest area survey at z~9 for Lyman-alpha emitters, providing the most stringent upper limits to date on their abundance.

Findings

No bright LAEs detected at z~9.

Improved upper limits on LAE space density by 3 orders of magnitude.

Galactic brown dwarfs can contaminate high-z LAE searches.

Abstract

We present the largest area survey to date (1.4 deg2) for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at z~9, as part of the Hi-z Emission Line Survey (HiZELS). The survey, which primarily targets H-alpha emitters at z < 3, uses the Wide Field CAMera on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and a custom narrow-band filter in the J band to reach a Lyman-alpha luminosity limit of ~10^43.8 erg/s over a co-moving volume of 1.12x10^6 Mpc^3 at z = 8.96+-0.06. Two candidates were found out of 1517 line emitters, but those were rejected as LAEs after follow-up observations. This improves the limit on the space density of bright Lyman-alpha emitters by 3 orders of magnitude and is consistent with suppression of the bright end of the Lyman-alpha luminosity function beyond z~6. Combined with upper limits from smaller but deeper surveys, this rules out some of the most extreme models for high-redshift Lyman-alpha emitters. The potential contamination of narrow-band Lyman-alpha surveys at z>7 by Galactic brown dwarf stars is also examined, leading to the conclusion that such contamination may well be significant for searches at 7.7 < z < 8.0, 9.1 < z < 9.5 and 11.7 < z < 12.2.