Kavli Affiliate: Hsiao-Mei (Sherry) Cho
| First 5 Authors: [#item_custom_name[1, [#item_custom_name[2, [#item_custom_name[3, [#item_custom_name[4, [#item_custom_name[5| Summary:In order to account for reionization of the early Universe, galaxies at that time must have had significantly higher escape fractions of Lyman Continuum (LyC) than observed in the present Universe. Any explanation invoked to explain LyC escape must agree with this dramatic cosmic evolution. Galaxy mergers are often suggested as such a regulating mechanism. They occur an order or magnitude more frequently at $z ge 3$ than in the local Universe, and they can trigger LyC escape either by inducing strong nuclear starbursts, or by tidally displacing the neutral ISM from the bulk of the stars. In the local Universe, LyC escape has been found to correlate with a range of physical and observable properties closely associated with strong star formation. For this reason, interest in mergers as drivers of LyC escape have been mainly focused on their capacity to induce strong star formation. However, at $z ge 2$, these correlations are weaker, and we observe a much more diverse Lyman Continuum Emitter (LCE) population. This suggests that processes external to the LCE galaxies are more important for facilitating the escape at higher redshifts, which makes tidal displacement an interesting explanatory model; however, this has only been conclusively observed once before. In this letter, we present archival JWST/NIRSpec IFU and HST UVIS and IR imaging observations of the z = 3 Lyman-Continuum emitter LACES104037. We find that its Lyman-Continuum escape originates in a tidal bridge in the direction towards an interacting companion galaxy first identified in this work. LyC escape from tidal stripping or in-situ formed stars in tidal features could help explain both the higher cosmic LyC escape fraction and the greater diversity of LCE galaxy properties at higher redshifts.| Search Query: arXiv Query: search_query=au:Cho OR all:Hsiao-Mei&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3Read More