NEAR-INFRARED SURVEY OF THE GOODS-NORTH FIELD: SEARCH FOR LUMINOUS GALAXY CANDIDATES AT z ≳ 6.5

We present near-infrared (NIR; J and K-s) survey of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-N) field. The publicly available imaging data were obtained using the MOIRCS instrument on the 8.2 m Subaru and the WIRCam instrument on the 3.6 m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). These observations fulfill a serious wavelength gap in the GOODS-N data, i.e., lack of deep NIR observations. We combine the Subaru/MOIRCS and CFHT/WIRCam archival data to generate deep J- and K-s-band images, covering the full GOODS-N field (similar to 169 arcmin(2)) to an AB magnitude limit of similar to 25 mag (3 sigma). We applied z(850)-band dropout color selection criteria, using the NIR data generated here. We have identified two possible Lyman break galaxy (LBG) candidates at z greater than or similar to 6.5 with J less than or similar to 24.5. The first candidate is a likely LBG at z similar or equal to 6.5 based on a weak spectral feature tentatively identified as Lya line in the deep Keck/DEIMOS spectrum, while the second candidate is a possible LBG at z similar or equal to 7 based on its photometric redshift. These z(850)-dropout objects, if confirmed, are among the brightest such candidates found so far. At z greater than or similar to 6.5, their star formation rate is estimated as 100-200 M-circle dot yr(-1). If they continue to form stars at this rate, they assemble a stellar mass of similar to 5 x 10(10) M-circle dot after about 400 million years, becoming the progenitors of massive galaxies observed at z similar or equal to 5. We study the implication of the z(850)-band dropout candidates discovered here, in constraining the bright end of the luminosity function and understanding the nature of high-redshift galaxies.