The Lyman Continuum Escape Survey: Ionizing Radiation from [O III]-Strong Sources at a Redshift of 3.1

Understand

We present results from the LymAn Continuum Escape Survey (LACES), a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program designed to characterize the ionizing radiation emerging from a sample of Lyman alpha emitting galaxies at redshift $z\simeq 3.1$.

• As many show intense [O III] emission characteristic of $z>6.5$ star-forming galaxies, they may represent valuable low redshift analogs of galaxies in the reionization era.
• Using HST Wide Field Camera 3 / UVIS $F336W$ to image Lyman continuum emission, we investigate the escape fraction of ionizing photons in this sample.
• For 61 sources, of which 77% are spectroscopically confirmed and 53 have measures of [O III] emission, we detect Lyman continuum leakage in 20%, a rate significantly higher than is seen in individual continuum-selected Lyman break galaxies.