The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: II. Spectroscopic redshifts and comparisons to color selections of high-redshift galaxies

H. Inami, R. Bacon, J. Brinchmann, J. Richard, T. Contini, S. Conseil, S. Hamer, M. Akhlaghi, N. Bouche, B. Clement, G. Desprez, A. B. Drake, T. Hashimoto, F. Leclercq, M. Maseda, L. Michel-Dansac, M. Paalvast, L. Tresse, E. Ventou, W. KollatschnyL. A. Boogaard, H. Finley, R. A. Marino, J. Schaye, L. Wisotzki

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Abstract

We have conducted a two-layered spectroscopic survey (1'x1' ultra deep and 3'x3' deep regions) in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). The combination of a large field of view, high sensitivity, and wide wavelength coverage provides an order of magnitude improvement in spectroscopically confirmed redshifts in the HUDF; i.e., 1206 secure spectroscopic redshifts for HST continuum selected objects, which corresponds to 15% of the total (7904). The redshift distribution extends well beyond z>3 and to HST/F775W magnitudes as faint as ~30 mag (AB, 1-sigma). In addition, 132 secure redshifts were obtained for sources with no HST counterparts that were discovered in the MUSE data cubes by a blind search for emission-line features. In total, we present 1338 high quality redshifts, which is a factor of eight increase compared with the previously known spectroscopic redshifts in the same field. We assessed redshifts mainly with the spectral features [OII] at z~20% up to 28-29 mag and ~27 mag, respectively. We used the determined redshifts to test continuum color selection (dropout) diagrams of high-z galaxies. The selection condition for F336W dropouts successfully captures ~80% of the targeted z~2.7 galaxies. However, for higher redshift selections (F435W, F606W, and F775W dropouts), the success rates decrease to ~20-40%. We empirically redefine the selection boundaries to make an attempt to improve them to ~60%. The revised boundaries allow bluer colors that capture Lya emitters with high Lya equivalent widths falling in the broadbands used for the color-color selection. Along with this paper, we release the redshift and line flux catalog.
Original languageEnglish
Article numberA2
Number of pages26
JournalAstronomy & Astrophysics
Volume608
Early online date29 Nov 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2017

Bibliographical note

26 pages, 26 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in A&A (MUSE UDF Series Paper II), the redshift catalogs will be available at the CDS

Keywords

  • astro-ph.GA

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