KECK/MOSFIRE spectroscopic confirmation of a Virgo-like cluster ancestor at z=2.095


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We present the spectroscopic confirmation of a galaxy cluster at $z=2.095$ in the COSMOS field. This galaxy cluster was first reported in the ZFOURGE survey as harboring evolved massive galaxies using photometric redshifts derived with deep near-infrared (NIR) medium-band filters. We obtain medium resolution ($R sim$ 3600) NIR spectroscopy with MOSFIRE on the Keck 1 telescope and secure 180 redshifts in a $12times12$ region. We find a prominent spike of 57 galaxies at $z=2.095$ corresponding to the galaxy cluster. The cluster velocity dispersion is measured to be $sigma_{rm v1D}$ = 552 $pm$ 52 km/s. This is the first study of a galaxy cluster in this redshift range ($z gt 2.0$) with the combination of spectral resolution ($sim$26 km/s) and the number of confirmed members (${>}50$) needed to impose a meaningful constraint on the cluster velocity dispersion and map its members over a large field of view. Our $Lambda$CDM cosmological simulation suggests that this cluster will most likely evolve into a Virgo-like cluster with ${rm M_{vir}}{=}10^{14.4pm0.3} {rm M_odot}$ ($68%$ confidence) at $zsim$ 0. The theoretical expectation of finding such a cluster is $sim$ $4%$. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of studying galaxy clusters at $z > 2$ in the same detailed manner using multi-object NIR spectrographs as has been done in the optical in lower redshift clusters.

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