A Quasar-anchored Protocluster at <i>z</i> = 6.6 in the ASPIRE Survey. I. Properties of [O <scp>iii</scp>] Emitters in a 10 Mpc Overdensity Structure
Jaclyn B. Champagne, Feige Wang, Haowen Zhang, Jinyi Yang, Xiaohui Fan, Joseph F. Hennawi, Fengwu Sun, Eduardo Bañados, Sarah E. I. Bosman, Tiago Costa, Anna–Christina Eilers, Ryan Endsley, Xiangyu Jin, Hyunsung D. Jun, Mingyu Li, Xiaojing Lin, Weizhe Liu, F. Loiacono, Alessandro Lupi, Chiara Mazzucchelli, Maria Pudoka, Klaudia Protušová, Sofía Rojas-Ruiz, Wei Leong Tee, Maxime Trebitsch, Bram Venemans, Ming-Yang Zhuang, Siwei Zou
Abstract
Abstract A SPectroscopic survey of bIased halos in the Reionization Era is a quasar legacy survey primarily using JWST to target a sample of 25 z > 6 quasars with NIRCam slitless spectroscopy and imaging. The first study in this series found evidence of a strong overdensity of galaxies around J0305−3150, a luminous quasar at z = 6.61, within a single NIRCam pointing obtained in JWST Cycle 1. Here we present the first results of a JWST Cycle 2 mosaic that covers 35 arcmin 2 with NIRCam imaging/wide-field slitless spectroscopy of the same field to investigate the spatial extent of the putative protocluster. The F356W grism data target [O iii ]+H β at 5.3 < z < 7 and reveal a population of 124 line emitters down to a flux limit of 1.2 × 10 −18 erg s −1 cm −2 . Fifty-three of these galaxies lie at 6.5 < z < 6.8 spanning 10 cMpc on the sky, corresponding to an overdensity within a 2500 cMpc 3 volume of 12.5 ± 2.6, anchored by the quasar. Comparing to the [O iii ] luminosity function from the Emission line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionization project, we find a dearth of faint [O iii ] emitters at log( L /erg s −1 ) < 42.3, which we suggest is consistent with either bursty star formation causing galaxies to scatter around the grism detection limit or modest suppression from quasar feedback. While we find a strong filamentary overdensity of [O iii ] emitters consistent with a protocluster, we suggest that we could be insensitive to a population of older, more massive Lyman break galaxies with weak nebular emission on scales >10 cMpc.