The Subaru FMOS Galaxy Redshift Survey (FastSound). I. Overview of the Survey Targeting on H$\alpha$ Emitters at $z \sim 1.4$

TL;DR

FastSound is a large-scale near-infrared galaxy redshift survey using Subaru's FMOS instrument, targeting H-alpha emitters at z~1.4 to measure cosmic growth and test gravity theories.

Contribution

This paper provides the first comprehensive overview of the FastSound survey, including its design, target selection, observations, and initial emission line detections.

Findings

Detected emission lines from ~4,000 star-forming galaxies.

Covered 20.6 deg² with 121 pointings in four CFHTLS Wide fields.

Achieved sensitivity to H-alpha flux ~2 x 10^{-16} erg cm^{-2} s^{-1}.

Abstract

FastSound is a galaxy redshift survey using the near-infrared Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) mounted on the Subaru Telescope, targeting H$\alpha$ emitters at $z \sim 1.18$--$1.54$ down to the sensitivity limit of H$\alpha$ flux $\sim 2 \times 10^{-16} \ \rm erg \ cm^{-2} s^{-1}$. The primary goal of the survey is to detect redshift space distortions (RSD), to test General Relativity by measuring the growth rate of large scale structure and to constrain modified gravity models for the origin of the accelerated expansion of the universe. The target galaxies were selected based on photometric redshifts and H$\alpha$ flux estimates calculated by fitting spectral energy distribution (SED) models to the five optical magnitudes of the Canada France Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) Wide catalog. The survey started in March 2012, and all the observations were completed in July 2014. In total, we achieved $121$ pointings of FMOS (each pointing has a $30$ arcmin diameter circular footprint) covering $20.6$ deg$^2$ by tiling the four fields of the CFHTLS Wide in a hexagonal pattern. Emission lines were detected from $\sim 4,000$ star forming galaxies by an automatic line detection algorithm applied to 2D spectral images. This is the first in a series of papers based on FastSound data, and we describe the details of the survey design, target selection, observations, data reduction, and emission line detections.