Star Forming Galaxies at z~6 and Reionization

Abstract

We determine the abundance of i'-band drop-outs in the HST/ACS GOODS surveys and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The majority of these sources are likely to be z~6 galaxies whose flux decrement arises from Lyman-alpha absorption. We have shown with Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopy that this technique does indeed select high redshift galaxies, and we discovered Lyman-alpha emission for about a third of the galaxies with z'_AB<25.6 The increased depth of UDF enables us to reach a ~10sigma limiting magnitude of z'_AB=28.5 (equivalent to 1.5M_sun/yr at z=6.1, or 0.1L*_UV for the z~3 U-drop population). The star formation rate at z~6 was approximately x6 LESS than at z~3. This declining comoving star formation rate poses an interesting challenge for models which suggest that L_UV>0.1L* star forming galaxies at z~6 reionized the universe. The short-fall in ionizing photons might be alleviated by galaxies fainter than our limit, or a radically different IMF. Alternatively, the bulk of reionization might have occurred at z>>6. We have recently discovered evidence of an early epoch of star formation in some of the i'-drops at z~6. Spitzer images with IRAC at 3.6-4.5microns show evidence of the age-sensitive Balmer/4000Ang break, dominated by stars older than 100Myr (and most probably 400Myr old). This pushes the formation epoch for these galaxies to z_form=7.5-13.5. There are at least some galaxies already assembled with stellar masses ~3x10^10M_sun (equivalent to 0.2M* today) within the first billion years. The early formation of such systems may have played a key role in reionizing the Universe at z~10.