arXiv subjects

Thibault Garel

Publications and source records attributed to Thibault Garel.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey XIII. Spatially resolved spectral properties of Lyman alpha haloes around star-forming galaxies at z > 3

We present spatially resolved maps of six individually-detected Lyman alpha haloes (LAHs) as well as a first statistical analysis of the Lyman alpha (Lya) spectral signature in the circum-galactic medium of high-redshift star-forming galaxies using MUSE. Our resolved spectroscopic analysis of the LAHs reveals significant intrahalo variations of the Lya line profile. Using a three-dimensional two-component model for the Lya emission, we measure the full width at half maximum (FWHM), the peak velocity shift and the asymmetry of the Lya line in the core and in the halo of 19 galaxies. We find that the Lya line shape is statistically different in the halo compared to the core for ~40% of our galaxies. Similarly to object-by-object based studies and a recent resolved study using lensing, we find a correlation between the peak velocity shift and the width of the Lya line both at the interstellar and circum-galactic scales. While there is a lack of correlation between the spectral properties and the spatial scale lengths of our LAHs, we find a correlation between the width of the line in the LAH and the halo flux fraction. Interestingly, UV bright galaxies show broader, more redshifted and less asymmetric Lya lines in their haloes. The most significant correlation found is for the FWHM of the line and the UV continuum slope of the galaxy, suggesting that the redder galaxies have broader Lya lines. The generally broad and red line shapes found in the halo component suggests that the Lya haloes are powered either by scattering processes through an outflowing medium, fluorescent emission from outflowing cold clumps of gas, or a mix of both. Considering the large diversity of the Lya line profiles observed in our sample and the lack of strong correlation, the interpretation of our results is still broadly open and underlines the need for realistic spatially resolved models of the LAHs.

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arXiv2020

RASCAS: RAdiation SCattering in Astrophysical Simulations

Resonant lines are powerful probes of the interstellar and circumgalactic medium of galaxies. Their transfer in gas being a complex process, the interpretation of their observational signatures, either in absorption or in emission, is often not straightforward. Numerical radiative transfer simulations are needed to accurately describe the travel of resonant line photons in real and in frequency space, and to produce realistic mock observations. This paper introduces RASCAS, a new public 3D radiative transfer code developed to perform the propagation of any resonant line in numerical simulations of astrophysical objects. RASCAS was designed to be easily customisable and to process simulations of arbitrarily large sizes on large supercomputers. RASCAS performs radiative transfer on an adaptive mesh with an octree structure using the Monte Carlo technique. RASCAS features full MPI parallelisation, domain decomposition, adaptive load-balancing, and a standard peeling algorithm to construct mock observations. The radiative transport of resonant line photons through different mixes of species (e.g. \ion{H}{i}, \ion{Si}{ii}, \ion{Mg}{ii}, \ion{Fe}{ii}), including their interaction with dust, is implemented in a modular fashion to allow new transitions to be easily added to the code. RASCAS is very accurate and efficient. It shows perfect scaling up to a minimum of a thousand cores. It has been fully tested against radiative transfer problems with analytic solutions and against various test cases proposed in the literature. Although it was designed to describe accurately the many scatterings of line photons, RASCAS may also be used to propagate photons at any wavelength (e.g. stellar continuum or fluorescent lines), or to cast millions of rays to integrate the optical depths of ionising photons, making it highly versatile.

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arXiv2019

Spectral variations of Lyman-alpha emission within strongly lensed sources observed with MUSE

We present an analysis of HI Lyman-alpha emission in deep VLT/MUSE observations of two highly magnified and extended galaxies at z=3.5 and 4.03, including a newly discovered, almost complete Einstein ring. While these Lyman-alpha haloes are intrinsically similar to the ones typically seen in other MUSE deep fields, the benefits of gravitational lensing allows us to construct exceptionally detailed maps of Lyman-alpha line properties at sub-kpc scales. By combining all multiple images, we are able to observe complex structures in the Lyman-alpha emission and uncover small (~ 120 km/s in Lyman-alpha peak shift), but significant at > 4 sigma, systematic variations in the shape of the Lyman-alpha line profile within each halo. Indeed, we observe a global trend for the line peak shift to become redder at large radii, together with a strong correlation between the peak wavelength and line width. This systematic intrahalo variation is markedly similar to the object-to-object variations obtained from the integrated properties of recent large samples. Regions of high surface brightness correspond to relatively small line shifts, which could indicate that Lyman-alpha emission escapes preferentially from regions where the line profile has been less severely affected by scattering of Lyman-alpha photons.

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arXiv2019

Linking gas and galaxies at high redshift: MUSE surveys the environments of six damped Lyman alpha galaxies at z~3

We present results from a survey of galaxies in the fields of six z>3 Damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). We report a high detection rate of up to ~80% of galaxies within 1000 km/s from DLAs and with impact parameters between 25 and 280 kpc. In particular, we discovered 5 high-confidence Lyman alpha emitters associated with three DLAs, plus up to 9 additional detections across five of the six fields. The majority of the detections are at relatively large impact parameters (>50 kpc) with two detections being plausible host galaxies. Among our detections, we report four galaxies associated with the most metal-poor DLA in our sample (Z/Z_sun = -2.33), which trace an overdense structure resembling a filament. By comparing our detections with predictions from the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE) cosmological simulations and a semi-analytic model designed to reproduce the observed bias of DLAs at z>2, we conclude that our observations are consistent with a scenario in which a significant fraction of DLAs trace the neutral regions within halos with a characteristic mass of 10^11-10^12 M_sun, in agreement with the inference made from the large-scale clustering of DLAs. We finally show how larger surveys targeting ~25 absorbers have the potential of constraining the characteristic masses of halos hosting high-redshift DLAs with sufficient accuracy to discriminate between different models.

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arXiv2019

Understanding the escape of LyC and Ly$α$ photons from turbulent clouds

Understanding the escape of Lyman continuum (LyC) and Lyman alpha (Lya) photons from molecular clouds is one of the keys to constraining the reionization history of the Universe and the evolution of galaxies at high redshift. Using a set of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with adaptive mesh refinement, we investigate how photons propagate and escape from turbulent clouds with different masses, star formation efficiencies (SFEs), and metallicities, as well as with different models of stellar spectra and supernova feedback. We find that the escape fractions in both LyC and Lya are generally increasing with time if the cloud is efficiently dispersed by radiation and supernova feedback. When the total SFE is low (1% of the cloud mass), 0.1-5% of LyC photons leave the metal-poor cloud, whereas the fractions increase to 20-70% in clouds with a 10% SFE. LyC photons escape more efficiently if gas metallicity is lower, if the upper mass limit in the stellar initial mass function is higher, if binary interactions are allowed in the evolution of stars, or if additional strong radiation pressure, such as Lya pressure, is present. As a result, the number of escaping LyC photons can easily vary by a factor of $\sim4$ on cloud scales. The escape fractions of Lya photons are systemically higher (60-80%) than those of LyC photons despite large optical depths at line centre ($τ_0\sim10^6-10^9$). Scattering of Lya photons is already significant on cloud scales, leading to double-peaked profiles with peak separations of $v_{\rm sep}\sim400\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}$ during the initial stage of the cloud evolution, while it becomes narrower than $v_{\rm sep} \le 150 \, {\rm km\,s^{-1}}$ in the LyC bright phase. Comparisons with observations of low-redshift galaxies suggest that Lya photons require further interactions with neutral hydrogen to reproduce their velocity offset for a given LyC escape fraction.

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arXiv2018

The SPHINX Cosmological Simulations of the First Billion Years: the Impact of Binary Stars on Reionization

We present the SPHINX suite of cosmological adaptive mesh refinement simulations, the first radiation-hydrodynamical simulations to simultaneously capture large-scale reionization and the escape of ionizing radiation from thousands of resolved galaxies. Our $5$ and $10$ co-moving Mpc volumes resolve haloes down to the atomic cooling limit and model the inter-stellar medium with better than $\approx10$ pc resolution. The project has numerous goals in improving our understanding of reionization and making predictions for future observations. In this first paper we study how the inclusion of binary stars in computing stellar luminosities impacts reionization, compared to a model that includes only single stars. Owing to the suppression of galaxy growth via strong feedback, our galaxies are in good agreement with observational estimates of the galaxy luminosity function. We find that binaries have a significant impact on the timing of reionization: with binaries, our boxes are $99.9$ percent ionized by volume at $z\approx 7$, while without them our volumes fail to reionize by $z=6$. These results are robust to changes in volume size, resolution, and feedback efficiency. The escape of ionizing radiation from individual galaxies varies strongly and frequently. On average, binaries lead to escape fractions of $\approx 7-10$ percent, about $3.5$ times higher than with single stars only. The higher escape fraction is a result of a shallower decline in ionizing luminosity with age, and is the primary reason for earlier reionization, although the higher integrated luminosity with binaries also plays a sub-dominant role.

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arXiv2018

The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: XII. MgII emission and absorption in star-forming galaxies

The physical origin of the near-ultraviolet MgII emission remains an under-explored domain, contrary to more typical emission lines detected in the spectra of star-forming galaxies. We explore the nebular and physical properties for a sample of 381 galaxies between 0.70 < z < 2.34 drawn from the MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Survey. The spectra of these galaxies show a wide variety of profiles of the MgII 2796,2803 resonant doublet, from absorption to emission. We present a study on the main drivers for the detection of MgII emission in galaxy spectra. By exploiting photoionization models we verified that the emission-line ratios observed in galaxies with MgII in emission are consistent with nebular emission from HII regions. From a simultaneous analysis of MUSE spectra and ancillary HST information via spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting, we find that galaxies with MgII in emission have lower stellar masses, smaller sizes, bluer spectral slopes and lower optical depth than those with absorption. This leads us to suggest that MgII emission is a potential tracer of physical conditions not merely related to those of the ionized gas. We show that these differences in MgII emission/absorption can be explained in terms of a higher dust and neutral gas content in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies showing MgII in absorption, confirming the extreme sensitivity of MgII to the presence of the neutral ISM. We conclude with an analogy between the MgII doublet and the Ly-alpha line, due to their resonant nature. Further investigations with current and future facilities, including JWST, are promising as the detection of MgII emission and its potential connection with Ly-alpha could provide new insights on the ISM content in the early Universe.

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arXiv2018

Impact of Lyman alpha pressure on metal-poor dwarf galaxies

Understanding the origin of strong galactic outflows and the suppression of star formation in dwarf galaxies is a key problem in galaxy formation. Using a set of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of an isolated dwarf galaxy embedded in a $10^{10}\,M_\odot$ halo, we show that the momentum transferred from resonantly scattered Lyman-$α$ (Lya) photons is an important source of stellar feedback which can shape the evolution of galaxies. We find that Lya feedback suppresses star formation by a factor of two in metal-poor galaxies by regulating the dynamics of star-forming clouds before the onset of supernova explosions (SNe). This is possible because each Lya photon resonantly scatters and imparts 10-300 times greater momentum than in the single scattering limit. Consequently, the number of star clusters predicted in the simulations is reduced by a factor of $\sim 5$, compared to the model without the early feedback. More importantly, we find that galactic outflows become weaker in the presence of strong Lya radiation feedback, as star formation and associated SNe become less bursty. We also examine a model in which radiation field is arbitrarily enhanced by a factor of up to 10, and reach the same conclusion. The typical mass loading factors in our metal-poor dwarf system are estimated to be $\sim5-10$ near the mid plane, while it is reduced to $\sim1$ at larger radii. Finally, we find that the escape of ionizing radiation and hence the reionization history of the Universe is unlikely to be strongly affected by Lya feedback.

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arXiv2017

The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey X. Ly$α$ Equivalent Widths at $2.9 < z < 6.6$

We present rest-frame Ly$α$ equivalent widths (EW) of 417 Ly$α$ emitters (LAEs) detected with Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at $2.9 < z < 6.6$ in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Based on the deep MUSE spectroscopy and ancillary Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry data, we carefully measured EW values taking into account extended Ly$α$ emission and UV continuum slopes ($β$). Our LAEs reach unprecedented depths, both in Ly$α$ luminosities and UV absolute magnitudes, from log($L_{\rm Lyα}$/erg s$^{-1}$) $\sim$41.0 to 43.0 and from Muv $\sim$ -16 to -21 (0.01-1.0 $L^{*}_{\rm z=3}$). The EW values span the range of $\sim$ 5 to 240 Å or larger, and their distribution can be well fitted by an exponential law $N = N_{\rm 0}$ exp($-$EW/$w_{\rm 0}$). Owing to the high dynamic range in Muv, we find that the scale factor, $w_{\rm 0}$, depends on Muv in the sense that including fainter Muv objects increases $w_{\rm 0}$, i.e., the Ando effect. The results indicate that selection functions affect the EW scale factor. Taking these effects into account, we find that our $w_{\rm 0}$ values are consistent with those in the literature within $1σ$ uncertainties at $2.9 < z < 6.6$ at a given threshold of Muv and $L_{\rm Lyα}$. Interestingly, we find 12 objects with EW $>200$ Å above $1σ$ uncertainties. Two of these 12 LAEs show signatures of merger or AGN activity: the weak CIV $λ1549$ emission line. For the remaining 10 very large EW LAEs, we find that the EW values can be reproduced by young stellar ages ($< 100$ Myr) and low metallicities ($\lesssim 0.02$ $Z_{\rm \odot}$). Otherwise, at least part of the Ly$α$ emission in these LAEs needs to arise from anisotropic radiative transfer effects, fluorescence by hidden AGN or quasi-stellar object activity, or gravitational cooling.

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arXiv2017

The MUSE-Wide survey: A measurement of the Ly$α$ emitting fraction among $z>3$ galaxies

We present a measurement of the fraction of Lyman $α$ (Ly$α$) emitters ($X_{\rm{Ly} α}$) amongst HST continuum-selected galaxies at $3<z<6$ with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the VLT. Making use of the first 24 MUSE-Wide pointings in GOODS-South, each having an integration time of 1 hour, we detect 100 Ly$α$ emitters and find $X_{\rm{Ly} α}\gtrsim0.5$ for most of the redshift range covered, with 29 per cent of the Ly$α$ sample exhibiting rest equivalent widths (rest-EWs) $\leq$ 15Å. Adopting a range of rest-EW cuts (0 - 75Å), we find no evidence of a dependence of $X_{\rm{Ly} α}$ on either redshift or UV luminosity.

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arXiv2017

The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey VIII : Extended Lyman-alpha haloes around high-redshift star-forming galaxies

We report the detection of extended Lyman-alpha (Lya) haloes around 145 individual star-forming galaxies at redshifts 3 M_{UV}> -22) Lya emitters (LAEs). Using a 2D, two-component decomposition of Lya emission assuming circular exponential distributions, we measure scale lengths and luminosities of Lya haloes. We find that 80% of our objects having reliable Lya halo measurements show Lya emission that is significantly more extended than the UV continuum detected by HST (by a factor ~4 to >20). The median exponential scale length of the Lya haloes in our sample is ~4.5 kpc. By comparing the maximal detected extent of the Lya emission with the predicted dark matter halo virial radii of simulated galaxies, we show that the detected Lya emission of our selected sample of LAEs probes a significant portion of the cold circum-galactic medium (CGM) of these galaxies (>50% in average). This result shows that there must be significant HI reservoirs in the CGM and reinforces the idea that Lya haloes are ubiquitous around high-redshift Lya emitting galaxies. Our characterization of the Lya haloes indicates that the majority of the Lya flux comes from the halo (~65%) and that their scale lengths seem to be linked to the UV properties of the galaxies. We do not observe a significant Lya halo size evolution with redshift. We also find that the Lya lines cover a large range of full width at half maximum (FWHM) from 118 to 512 km/s. While the FWHM does not seem to be correlated to the Lya scale length, most compact Lya haloes and those that are not detected with high significance tend to have narrower Lya profiles. Finally, we investigate the origin of the extended Lya emission but we conclude that our data do not allow us to disentangle the possible processes.

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arXiv2017

A High Space Density of Luminous Lyman Alpha Emitters at z~6.5

We present the results of a systematic search for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at $6 \lesssim z \lesssim 7.6$ using the HST WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel (WISP) Survey. Our total volume over this redshift range is $\sim 8 \times10^5$ Mpc$^3$, comparable to many of the narrowband surveys despite their larger area coverage. We find two LAEs at $z=6.38$ and $6.44$ with line luminosities of L$_{\mathrm{Ly}α} \sim 4.7 \times 10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$, putting them among the brightest LAEs discovered at these redshifts. Taking advantage of the broad spectral coverage of WISP, we are able to rule out almost all lower-redshift contaminants. The WISP LAEs have a high number density of $7.7\times10^{-6}$ Mpc$^{-3}$. We argue that the LAEs reside in Mpc-scale ionized bubbles that allow the Lyman-alpha photons to redshift out of resonance before encountering the neutral IGM. We discuss possible ionizing sources and conclude that the observed LAEs alone are not sufficient to ionize the bubbles.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

MUSE Deep-Fields: The Lya Luminosity Function in the Hubble Deep Field South at 2.91 < z < 6.64

We present the first estimate of the Lyα luminosity function using blind spectroscopy from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, MUSE, in the Hubble Deep Field South. Using automatic source-detection software, we assemble a homogeneously-detected sample of 59 Lyα emitters covering a flux range of -18.0 < log10 (F) < -16.3 (erg s^-1 cm^-2), corresponding to luminosities of 41.4 < log10 (L) < 42.8 (erg s^-1). As recent studies have shown, Lyα fluxes can be underestimated by a factor of two or more via traditional methods, and so we undertake a careful assessment of each object's Lyα flux using a curve-of-growth analysis to account for extended emission. We describe our self-consistent method for determining the completeness of the sample, and present an estimate of the global Lyα luminosity function between redshifts 2.91 < z < 6.64 using the 1/Vmax estimator. We find the luminosity function is higher than many number densities reported in the literature by a factor of 2 - 3, although our result is consistent at the 1σ level with most of these studies. Our observed luminosity function is also in good agreement with predictions from semi-analytic models, and shows no evidence for strong evolution between the high- and low-redshift halves of the data. We demonstrate that one's approach to Lyα flux estimation does alter the observed luminosity function, and caution that accurate flux assessments will be crucial in measurements of the faint end slope. This is a pilot study for the Lyα luminosity function in the MUSE deep-fields, to be built on with data from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field which will increase the size of our sample by almost a factor of 10.

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arXiv2016

Semi-Analytic Galaxy Evolution (SAGE): Model Calibration and Basic Results

This paper describes a new publicly available codebase for modelling galaxy formation in a cosmological context, the "Semi-Analytic Galaxy Evolution" model, or SAGE for short. SAGE is a significant update to that used in Croton et al. (2006) and has been rebuilt to be modular and customisable. The model will run on any N-body simulation whose trees are organised in a supported format and contain a minimum set of basic halo properties. In this work we present the baryonic prescriptions implemented in SAGE to describe the formation and evolution of galaxies, and their calibration for three N-body simulations: Millennium, Bolshoi, and GiggleZ. Updated physics include: gas accretion, ejection due to feedback, and reincorporation via the galactic fountain; a new gas cooling--radio mode active galactic nucleus (AGN) heating cycle; AGN feedback in the quasar mode; a new treatment of gas in satellite galaxies; and galaxy mergers, disruption, and the build-up of intra-cluster stars. Throughout, we show the results of a common default parameterization on each simulation, with a focus on the local galaxy population.

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arXiv2016

The Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory: Cloud-Based Mock Galaxy Catalogues

We introduce the Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory (TAO), an online virtual laboratory that houses mock observations of galaxy survey data. Such mocks have become an integral part of the modern analysis pipeline. However, building them requires an expert knowledge of galaxy modelling and simulation techniques, significant investment in software development, and access to high performance computing. These requirements make it difficult for a small research team or individual to quickly build a mock catalogue suited to their needs. To address this TAO offers access to multiple cosmological simulations and semi-analytic galaxy formation models from an intuitive and clean web interface. Results can be funnelled through science modules and sent to a dedicated supercomputer for further processing and manipulation. These modules include the ability to (1) construct custom observer light-cones from the simulation data cubes; (2) generate the stellar emission from star formation histories, apply dust extinction, and compute absolute and/or apparent magnitudes; and (3) produce mock images of the sky. All of TAO's features can be accessed without any programming requirements. The modular nature of TAO opens it up for further expansion in the future.

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arXiv2015

Lyman-α Emitters in the context of hierarchical galaxy formation: predictions for VLT/MUSE surveys

The VLT Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) integral-field spectrograph can detect Lyα emitters (LAE) in the redshift range $2.8 \lesssim z \lesssim 6.7$ in a homogeneous way. Ongoing MUSE surveys will notably probe faint Lyα sources that are usually missed by current narrow-band surveys. We provide quantitative predictions for a typical wedding-cake observing strategy with MUSE based on mock catalogs generated with a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation coupled to numerical Lyα radiation transfer models in gas outflows. We expect $\approx$ 1500 bright LAEs ($F_{Lyα}$ $\gtrsim$ $10^{-17}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$) in a typical Shallow Field (SF) survey carried over $\approx$ 100 arcmin$^2$, and $\approx$ 2,000 sources as faint as $10^{-18}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$ in a Medium-Deep Field (MDF) survey over 10 arcmin$^2$. In a typical Deep Field (DF) survey of 1 arcmin$^2$, we predict that $\approx$ 500 extremely faint LAEs ($F_{Lyα}$ $\gtrsim$ $4 \times 10^{-19}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$) will be found. Our results suggest that faint Lyα sources contribute significantly to the cosmic Lyα luminosity and SFR budget. While the host halos of bright LAEs at z $\approx$ 3 and 6 have descendants with median masses of $2 \times 10^{12}$ and $5 \times 10^{13}$ $M_{\odot}$ respectively, the faintest sources detectable by MUSE at these redshifts are predicted to reside in halos which evolve into typical sub-$L^{*}$ and $L^{*}$ galaxy halos at z = 0. We expect typical DF and MDF surveys to uncover the building blocks of Milky Way-like objects, even probing the bulk of the stellar mass content of LAEs located in their progenitor halos at z $\approx$ 3.

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arXiv2014

Lyman Alpha and MgII as Probes of Galaxies and their Environments

Lyα emission, Lyα absorption and MgII absorption are powerful tracers of neutral hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and plays a central role in galaxy formation via gas accretion and outflows, as well as being the precursor to molecular clouds, the sites of star formation. Since 21cm emission from neutral hydrogen can only be directly observed in the local universe, we rely on Lyα emission, and Lyα and MgII absorption to probe the physics that drives galaxy evolution at higher redshifts. Furthermore, these tracers are sensitive to a range of hydrogen densities that cover the interstellar medium, the circumgalactic medium and the intergalactic medium, providing an invaluable means of studying gas physics in regimes where it is poorly understood. At high redshift, Lyα emission line searches have discovered thousands of star-forming galaxies out to z = 7. The large Lyα scattering cross-section makes observations of this line sensitive to even very diffuse gas outside of galaxies. Several thousand more high-redshift galaxies are known from damped Lyα absorption lines and absorption by the MgII doublet in quasar and GRB spectra. MgII, in particular, probes metal-enriched neutral gas inside galaxy haloes in a wide range of environments and redshifts (0.1 < z < 6.3), including the so-called redshift desert. Here we review what observations and theoretical models of Lyα emission, Lyα and MgII absorption have told us about the interstellar, circumgalactic and intergalactic medium in the context of galaxy formation and evolution.

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arXiv2014

Lyman continuum galaxies and the escape fraction of Lyman break galaxies

Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z ~ 3-4 are targeted to measure the fraction of Lyman continuum (LyC) flux that escapes from high redshift galaxies. However, z ~ 3-4 LBGs are identified using the Lyman break technique which preferentially selects galaxies with little or no LyC. We re-examine the standard LBG selection criteria by performing spectrophotometry on composite spectra constructed from 794 U_nGR-selected z ~ 3 LBGs from the literature while adding LyC flux of varying strengths. The modified composite spectra accurately predict the range of redshifts, properties, and LyC flux of LBGs in the literature that have spectroscopic LyC measurements while predicting the existence of a significant fraction of galaxies outside the standard selection region. These galaxies, termed Lyman continuum galaxies (LCGs), are expected to have high levels of LyC flux and are estimated to have a number density ~30-50 percent that of the LBG population. We define R_obs(U_n) as the relative fraction of observed LyC flux, integrated from 912A to the shortest restframe wavelength probed by the U_n filter, to the observed non-ionising flux (here measured at 1500A). We use the 794 spectra as a statistical sample for the full z ~ 3 LBG population, and find R_obs(U_n) = 5.0 +1.0/-0.4 (4.1 +0.5/-0.3) percent, which corresponds to an intrinsic LyC escape fraction of f_esc = 10.5 +2.0/-0.8 (8.6 +1.0/-0.6) percent (contamination corrected). From the composite spectral distributions we estimate R_obs(U_n) ~16 +/-3, f_esc ~33 +/-7 percent for LCGs and R_obs(U_n) ~8 +/-3, f_esc ~16 +/-4 percent for the combined LBG + LCG z ~ 3 sample. All values are measured in apertures defined by the UV continuum and do not include extended and/or offset LyC flux. A complete high redshift galaxy census and total emergent LyC flux is essential to quantify the contribution of galaxies to the epoch of reionisation.

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