The Lyman Continuum Escape Fraction of Galaxies and AGN in the GOODS Fields

Abstract

We present our analysis of the Lyman continuum (LyC) emission and escape fraction of 111 spectroscopically verified galaxies with and without active galactic nuclei (AGN) from 2.26 <  z  < 4.3. We extended our ERS sample from Smith et al. with 64 galaxies in the GOODS North and South fields using WFC3/UVIS F225W, F275W, and F336W mosaics we independently drizzled using the HDUV, CANDELS, and UVUDF data. Among the 17 AGN from the 111 galaxies, one provided a LyC detection in F275W at  = 23.19 mag (signal-to-noise ratio, S/N, ≃ 133) and GALEX NUV at  = 23.77 mag (S/N ≃ 13). We simultaneously fit SDSS and Chandra spectra of this AGN to an accretion disk and Comptonization model, and find values of and . For the remaining 110 galaxies, we stack image cutouts that capture their LyC emission using the F225W, F275W, and F336W data of the GOODS and ERS samples, and both combined, as well as subsamples of galaxies with and without AGN, and all galaxies. We find the stack of 17 AGN dominate the LyC production from  ≃ 2.3–4.3 by a factor of ∼10 compared to all 94 galaxies without AGN. While the IGM of the early universe may have been reionized mostly by massive stars, there is evidence that a significant portion of the ionizing energy came from AGN.