Overdensities of Y-dropout Galaxies from the Brightest-of-Reionizing Galaxies Survey: A Candidate Protocluster at Redshift z~8

TL;DR

This study investigates the clustering of Y-dropout galaxies at z~8, finding significant overdensities around bright candidates, consistent with predictions of dark matter halo assembly, and modeling these as potential protoclusters.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence of galaxy overdensities at z~8 and links them to dark matter halo structures through cosmological simulations, advancing understanding of early universe galaxy formation.

Findings

Significant correlation between faint and bright Y-dropouts (>99.84% confidence).

Overdensity in one field suggests a massive dark matter halo (~4-7x10^11 Msun).

Predicted future merger into a galaxy cluster by z=0.

Abstract

Theoretical and numerical modeling of dark-matter halo assembly predicts that the most luminous galaxies at high redshift are surrounded by overdensities of fainter companions. We test this prediction with HST observations acquired by our Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey, which identified four very bright z~8 candidates as Y-dropout sources in four of the 23 non-contiguous WFC3 fields observed. We extend here the search for Y-dropouts to fainter luminosities (M_* galaxies with M_AB\sim-20), with detections at >5sigma confidence (compared to >8sigma confidence adopted earlier) identifying 17 new candidates. We demonstrate that there is a correlation between number counts of faint and bright Y-dropouts at >99.84% confidence. Field BoRG58, which contains the best bright z\sim8 candidate (M_AB=-21.3), has the most significant overdensity of faint Y-dropouts. Four new sources are located within 70arcsec (corresponding to 3.1 comoving Mpc at z=8) from the previously known brighter z\sim8 candidate. The overdensity of Y-dropouts in this field has a physical origin to high confidence (p>99.975%), independent of completeness and contamination rate of the Y-dropout selection. We modeled the overdensity by means of cosmological simulations and estimate that the principal dark matter halo has mass M_h\sim(4-7)x10^11Msun (\sim5sigma density peak) and is surrounded by several M_h\sim10^11Msun halos which could host the fainter dropouts. In this scenario, we predict that all halos will eventually merge into a M_h>2x10^14Msun galaxy cluster by z=0. Follow-up observations with ground and space based telescopes are required to secure the z\sim8 nature of the overdensity, discover new members, and measure their precise redshift.