The production and escape of Lyman-Continuum radiation from star-forming galaxies at z~2 and their redshift evolution

Jorryt Matthee, David Sobral, Philip Best, Ali Ahmad Khostovan, Ivan Oteo, Rychard Bouwens, Huub Röttgering

Published 2016-05-27Version 1

We study the production and escape of ionizing photons of a sample of 588 H$\alpha$ (Ha) emitters (HAEs) at z=2.2 in COSMOS by exploring their rest-frame Lyman Continuum (LyC) with GALEX/NUV data. We find 8 candidate LyC leakers with f$_{esc}$>60% out of a clean subsample of 191 HAEs (i.e. without any neighbour or foreground galaxy inside the GALEX PSF). Overall, we measure a very low escape fraction f$_{esc}$ <5.5(12.7)% through median (mean) stacking. By combining the Ha luminosity density with IGM emissivity measurements from absorption studies, we find a globally averaged f$_{esc}$ of 5.9$^{+9.3}_{-2.6}$ %. We find similarly low values of the global f$_{esc}$ at z~3-5, indicating little evolution of f$_{esc}$ with redshift and ruling out a high f$_{esc}$ at z<5. We also measure the typical number of ionizing photons per unit UV luminosity, $\xi_{ion}$=10$^{24.77\pm0.04}$ Hz erg$^{-1}$. HAEs at z=2.2 are typically three times less ionizing than typically assumed in the reionization era, but higher values of $\xi_{ion}$ are found for galaxies with strong Lyman-$\alpha$ and lower mass. Due to an increasing $\xi_{ion}$ with increasing EW(Ha), $\xi_{ion}$ likely increases with redshift. This evolution alone is fully in line with the observed evolution of $\xi_{ion}$ between z~2-5, indicating a typical value of $\xi_{ion}$~10$^{25.4}$ Hz erg$^{-1}$ in the reionization era. Therefore, only modest global escape fractions of ~10% are required to provide enough photons to reionize the Universe. Our results are consistent with only a few galaxies having f$_{esc}$~75%, which could indicate that a small fraction (4$\pm$1%) of galaxies contribute most of the total number of escaping ionizing photons.