No Arabic 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.
Intrinsic alignments (IA), the coherent alignment of intrinsic galaxy orientations, can be a source of a systematic error of weak lensing surveys. The redshift evolution of IA also contains information about the physics of galaxy formation and evolution. This paper presents the first measurement of IA at high redshift, $zsim 1.4$, using the spectroscopic catalog of blue star-forming galaxies of the FastSound redshift survey, with the galaxy shape information from the Canada-Hawaii-France telescope lensing survey. The IA signal is consistent with zero with power-law amplitudes fitted to the projected correlation functions for density-shape and shape-shape correlation components, $A_{delta+}=-0.0071pm 0.1340$ and $A_{++}=-0.0505pm 0.0848$, respectively. These results are consistent with those obtained from blue galaxies at lower redshifts (e.g., $A_{delta+}=0.0035_{-0.0389}^{+0.0387}$ and $A_{++}=0.0045_{-0.0168}^{+0.0166}$ at $z=0.51$ from the WiggleZ survey). The upper limit of the constrained IA amplitude corresponds to a few percent contamination to the weak-lensing shear power spectrum, resulting in systematic uncertainties on the cosmological parameter estimations by $-0.052<Delta sigma_8<0.039$ and $-0.039<Delta Omega_m<0.030$.
We measure the redshift-space correlation function from a spectroscopic sample of 2783 emission line galaxies from the FastSound survey. The survey, which uses the Subaru Telescope and covers the redshift ranges of $1.19<z<1.55$, is the first cosmological study at such high redshifts. We detect clear anisotropy due to redshift-space distortions (RSD) both in the correlation function as a function of separations parallel and perpendicular to the line of sight and its quadrupole moment. RSD has been extensively used to test general relativity on cosmological scales at $z<1$. Adopting a LCDM cosmology with the fixed expansion history and no velocity dispersion $sigma_{rm v}=0$, and using the RSD measurements on scales above 8Mpc/h, we obtain the first constraint on the growth rate at the redshift, $f(z)sigma_8(z)=0.482pm 0.116$ at $zsim 1.4$ after marginalizing over the galaxy bias parameter $b(z)sigma_8(z)$. This corresponds to $4.2sigma$ detection of RSD. Our constraint is consistent with the prediction of general relativity $fsigma_8sim 0.392$ within the $1-sigma$ confidence level. When we allow $sigma_{rm v}$ to vary and marginalize it over, the growth rate constraint becomes $fsigma_8=0.494^{+0.126}_{-0.120}$. We also demonstrate that by combining with the low-z constraints on $fsigma_8$, high-z galaxy surveys like the FastSound can be useful to distinguish modified gravity models without relying on CMB anisotropy experiments.
The efficient selection of high-redshift emission galaxies is important for future large galaxy redshift surveys for cosmology. Here we describe the target selection methods for the FastSound project, a redshift survey for H alpha emitting galaxies at z=1.2-1.5 using Subaru/FMOS to measure the linear growth rate fsigma 8 via Redshift Space Distortion (RSD) and constrain the theory of gravity. To select ~400 target galaxies in the 0.2 deg^2 FMOS field-of-view from photometric data of CFHTLS-Wide (u*griz), we test several different methods based on color-color diagrams or photometric redshift estimates from spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting. We also test the improvement in selection efficiency that can be achieved by adding near-infrared data from the UKIDSS DXS (J). The success rates of H alpha detection with FMOS averaged over two observed fields using these methods are 11.3% (color-color, optical), 13.6% (color-color, optical+NIR), 17.3% (photo-z, optical), and 15.1% (photo-z, optical+NIR). Selection from photometric redshifts tends to give a better efficiency than color-based methods, although there is no significant improvement by adding J band data within the statistical scatter. We also investigate the main limiting factors for the success rate, by using the sample of the HiZELS H alpha emitters that were selected by narrow-band imaging. Although the number density of total H alpha emitters having higher H alpha fluxes than the FMOS sensitivity is comparable with the FMOS fiber density, the limited accuracy of photometric redshift and H alpha flux estimations have comparable effects on the success rate of <~20% obtained from SED fitting.
We present basic properties of $sim$3,300 emission line galaxies detected by the FastSound survey, which are mostly H$alpha$ emitters at $z sim$ 1.2-1.5 in the total area of about 20 deg$^2$, with the H$alpha$ flux sensitivity limit of $sim 1.6 times 10^{-16} rm erg cm^{-2} s^{-1}$ at 4.5 sigma. This paper presents the catalogs of the FastSound emission lines and galaxies, which will be open to the public in the near future. We also present basic properties of typical FastSound H$alpha$ emitters, which have H$alpha$ luminosities of $10^{41.8}$-$10^{43.3}$ erg/s, SFRs of 20--500 $M_odot$/yr, and stellar masses of $10^{10.0}$--$10^{11.3}$ $M_odot$. The 3D distribution maps for the four fields of CFHTLS W1--4 are presented, clearly showing large scale clustering of galaxies at the scale of $sim$ 100--600 comoving Mpc. Based on 1,105 galaxies with detections of multiple emission lines, we estimate that contamination of non-H$alpha$ lines is about 4% in the single-line emission galaxies, which are mostly [OIII]$lambda$5007. This contamination fraction is also confirmed by the stacked spectrum of all the FastSound spectra, in which H$alpha$, [NII]$lambda lambda$6548,6583, [SII]$lambda lambda$6717, 6731, and [OI]$lambda lambda$6300,6364 are seen.
New results from a large survey of H-alpha emission-line galaxies at z=0.84 using WFCAM/UKIRT and a custom narrow-band filter in the J band are presented as part of the HiZELS survey. Reaching an effective flux limit of 1e-16 erg/s/cm^2 in a comoving volume of 1.8e5 Mpc^3, this represents the largest and deepest survey of its kind ever done at z~1. There are 1517 potential line emitters detected across 1.4 sq.deg of the COSMOS and UKIDSS UDS fields, of which 743 are selected as H-alpha emitters. These are used to calculate the H-alpha luminosity function, which is well-fitted by a Schechter function with phi*=10^(-1.92+-0.10) Mpc^-3, L*=10^(42.26+-0.05)erg/s, and alpha=-1.65+-0.15. The integrated star formation rate density (SFRD) at z=0.845 is 0.15+-0.01 M_sun/yr/Mpc^3. The results robustly confirm a strong evolution of SFRD from the present day out to z~1 and then flattening to z~2, using a single star-formation indicator. Out to z~1, both the characteristic luminosity and space density of the H-alpha emitters increase significantly; at higher redshifts, L* continues to increase, but phi* decreases. The z=0.84 H-alpha emitters are mostly disk galaxies (82+-3%), while 28+-4% of the sample show signs of merger activity and contribute ~20% to the total SFRD. Irregulars and mergers dominate the H-alpha luminosity function above L*, while disks are dominant at fainter luminosities. These results demonstrate that it is the evolution of normal disk galaxies that drives the strong increase in the SFRD from the current epoch to z~1, although the continued strong evolution of L* beyond z=1 suggests an increasing importance of merger activity at higher redshifts.