The Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey: Very Bright End of the Luminosity Function at z > 7

Abstract

The primary goal of the Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey (TENIS) is to find well-screened galaxy candidates at z > 7 (z' dropout) in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South (ECDFS). To this end, TENIS provides relatively deep J and K_s data (~25.3 ABmag, 5σ) for an area of 0.5 × 0.5 deg. Leveraged with existing data at mid-infrared to optical wavelengths, this allows us to screen for the most luminous high-z objects, which are rare and thus require a survey over a large field to be found. We introduce new color selection criteria to select a z > 7 sample with minimal contaminations from low-z galaxies and Galactic cool stars; to reduce confusion in the relatively low angular resolution Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) images, we introduce a novel deconvolution method to measure the IRAC fluxes of individual sources. Illustrating perhaps the effectiveness at which we screen out interlopers, we find only one z > 7 candidate, TENIS-ZD1. The candidate has a weighted z _phot of 7.8, and its colors and luminosity indicate a young (45M years old) starburst galaxy with a stellar mass of 3.2 × 10¹⁰ M _⊙. The result matches with the observational luminosity function analysis and the semianalytic simulation result based on the Millennium Simulations, which may over predict the volume density for high-z massive galaxies. The existence of TENIS-ZD1, if confirmed spectroscopically to be at z > 7, therefore poses a challenge to current theoretical models for how so much mass can accumulate in a galaxy at such a high redshift.