Emission Line Galaxies in the SHARDS Hubble Frontier Fields. II. Limits on Lyman-continuum Escape Fractions of Lensed Emission Line Galaxies at Redshifts 2 < z < 3.5

We present an investigation of escape fractions of UV photons from a unique sample of lensed low-mass emission line-selected galaxies at z < 3.5 found in the SHARDS Hubble Frontier Fields medium-band survey. We have used this deep imaging survey to locate 42 relatively low-mass galaxies down to log (M*/Me) = 7 in the redshift range 2.4 < z < 3.5 that are candidate line emitters. Using deep multiband Hubble UVIS imaging, we investigate the flux of escaping ionizing photons from these systems, obtaining 1 sigma upper limits of f(esc)(rel) similar to 7% for individual galaxies and < 2% for stacked data. We measure potential escaping Lyman-continuum flux for two low-mass line emitters with values at f(esc)(rel) = 0.032(-0.009)(+0.081) and 0.021(-0.006)(+0.101) , both detected at the similar to 3.2 sigma level. A detailed analysis of possible contamination reveals a < 0.1% probability that these detections result from line-of-sight contamination. The relatively low Lyman-continuum escape fraction limit and the low fraction of systems detected are an indication that low-mass line-emitting galaxies may not be as important a source of reionization as hoped if these are analogs of reionization sources. We also investigate the structures of our galaxy sample, finding no evidence for a correlation of escape fraction with asymmetric structure.

Automated summary

We conducted a study on the escape fractions of UV photons from a sample of lensed low-mass emission line-selected galaxies. Our findings suggest that these low-mass galaxies may not be significant sources of reionization, based on the relatively low Lyman-continuum escape fraction limits.