The Low-redshift Lyman-continuum Survey: [S II]-deficiency and the leakage of ionizing radiation

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that [S II]-deficiency effectively identifies low-redshift galaxies leaking ionizing radiation, aiding the investigation of reionization-era galaxy properties using Hubble Space Telescope data.

Contribution

It introduces [S II]-deficiency as a new diagnostic tool for selecting LyC-leaking galaxies at low redshift, validated with observational data.

Findings

LyC leakers are more [S II]-deficient than non-leakers.

The fraction of LyC detections increases with [S II]-deficiency.

[S II]-deficiency complements other LyC diagnostics like Lyman-$\alpha$ emission.

Abstract

The relationship between galaxy characteristics and the reionization of the universe remains elusive, mainly due to the observational difficulty in accessing the Lyman continuum (LyC) at these redshifts. It is thus important to identify low-redshift LyC-leaking galaxies that can be used as laboratories to investigate the physical processes that allow LyC photons to escape. The weakness of the [S II] nebular emission lines relative to typical star-forming galaxies has been proposed as a LyC predictor. In this paper, we show that the [S II]-deficiency is an effective method to select LyC-leaking candidates using data from the Low-redshift LyC Survey, which has detected flux below the Lyman edge in 35 out of 66 star-forming galaxies with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. We show that LyC leakers tend to be more [S II]-deficient and that the fraction of their detections increases as [S II]-deficiency becomes more prominent. Correlational studies suggest that [S II]-deficiency complements other LyC diagnostics (such as strong Lyman-$\alpha$ emission and high [O III]/[O II]). Our results verify an additional technique by which reionization-era galaxies could be studied.