Introducing the Texas Euclid Survey for Lyman Alpha (TESLA) Survey: Initial Study Correlating Galaxy Properties to Lyman-Alpha Emission

TL;DR

The TESLA survey investigates how galaxy properties like stellar mass and star formation rate relate to Lyman-alpha emission at redshifts 2-3.5, aiming to improve understanding of galaxy evolution and reionization through a large dataset.

Contribution

This study presents initial analysis of 43 LAEs from TESLA, revealing marginal correlations between galaxy properties and Lyman-alpha EW, and sets the stage for a larger survey to develop predictive models.

Findings

Marginal correlations between stellar mass and Lyman-alpha EW.

Star formation rate shows a similar marginal correlation with Lyman-alpha EW.

Lyman-alpha EW distribution fits an exponential model with a 150 Angstrom scale.

Abstract

We present the Texas Euclid Survey for Lyman-Alpha (TESLA), a spectroscopic survey in the 10 square degree of the Euclid North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) field. Using TESLA, we study how the physical properties of Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) correlate with Lyman-alpha emission to understand the escape of Lyman alpha from galaxies at redshifts 2 -- 3.5. We present an analysis of 43 LAEs performed in the NEP field using early data from the TESLA survey. We use Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam imaging in the grizy-bands, Spitzer/IRAC channels 1 and 2 from the Hawaii 20 square degree (H20) survey and spectra acquired by the Visible Integral-Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. We perform spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to compute the galaxy properties of 43 LAEs, and study correlations between stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), and dust, to the Lyman-alpha rest-frame equivalent widths (EW). We uncover marginal (1 sigma significance) correlations between stellar mass and Lyman-alpha EW, and star formation rate (SFR) and Lyman-alpha EW, with a Spearman correlation coefficient of -0.$34_{-.14}^{+.17}$ and -0.$37_{-.14}^{+.16}$ respectively. We show that the Lyman-alpha distribution of the 43 LAEs is consistent with being drawn from an exponential distribution with an e-folding scale of 150 Angstrom. Once complete the TESLA survey will enable the study of ~ thousands of LAEs to explore correlations between galaxy properties and Lyman-alpha EW. The large sample size will allow the construction of a predictive model for the Lyman-alpha EW as a function of SED-derived galaxy properties, which could be used to improve Lyman-alpha based constraints on reionization.