Searching for Islands of Reionization: A Potential Ionized Bubble Powered by a Spectroscopic Overdensity at z = 8.7

Abstract

We present the results from a spectroscopic survey using the MOSFIRE near-infrared spectrograph on the 10 m Keck telescope to search for Ly α emission from candidate galaxies at z ∼ 9–10 in four of the CANDELS fields (GOODS-N, EGS, UDS, and COSMOS). We observed 11 target galaxies, detecting Ly α from one object in ∼8.1 hr of integration, at z = 8.665 ± 0.001 with an integrated signal-to-noise ratio > 7. This galaxy is in the CANDELS Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field and lies physically close (3.5 physical Mpc [pMpc]) to another confirmed galaxy in this field with Ly α detected at z = 8.683. The detection of Ly α suggests the existence of large (∼1 pMpc) ionized bubbles fairly early in the reionization process. We explore the ionizing output needed to create bubbles of this size at this epoch and find that such a bubble requires more than the ionizing power provided by the full expected population of galaxies (by integrating the UV luminosity function down to M UV = −13). The Ly α we detect would be able to escape the predominantly neutral intergalactic medium at this epoch if our detected galaxy is inhabiting an overdensity, which would be consistent with the photometric overdensity previously identified in this region by Finkelstein et al. This implies that the CANDELS EGS field is hosting an overdensity at z = 8.7 that is powering one or more ionized bubbles, a hypothesis that will be imminently testable with forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope observations in this field.