SEARCH FOR z∼7 Lyα EMITTERS WITH THE SUPRIME-CAM AT THE SUBARU TELESCOPE

We report a search for z = 7 Ly alpha emitters (LAEs) using a custom-made narrowband filter centered at 9755 angstrom with the Suprime-Cam instrument installed at the Subaru telescope. We observed two different fields and obtained two samples of seven LAEs, of which four are robust in each field. We cover the luminosity range of 9.10(42)-2.10(43) erg s-1 in comoving volumes of similar to 4 x 10(5) and 4.3 x 10(5) Mpc(3). From this result, we derived possible z similar to 7 Ly alpha luminosity functions for the full samples and for a subsample of four objects in each field. We do not observe, in each case, any strong evolution between the z = 6.5 and z similar to 7 Ly alpha luminosity functions. Spectroscopic confirmation for these candidate samples is required to establish a definitive measure of the luminosity function at z similar to 7.