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The primordial He abundance $Y_\mathrm{P}$ is a powerful probe of cosmology. Currently, $Y_\mathrm{P}$ is best determined by observations of metal-poor galaxies, while there are only a few known local extremely metal-poor ($, Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We conduct intensity mapping to probe for extended diffuse Lyα emission around Lyα emitters (LAEs) at z ∼2−7, exploiting very deep (∼26 mag at 5σ) and large-area (∼4.5 deg2) Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam narrowband (NB) images and large LAE catalogs consisting of a total of 1540 LAEs at z = 2.2, 3.3, 5.7, and 6.6 obtained by the HSC-SSP and CHORUS projects. We calculate the spatial correlations of these LAEs with ∼1–2 billion pixel flux values of the NB images, deriving the average Lyα surface brightness (SBLyα ) radial profiles around the LAEs. By carefully estimating systematics such as fluctuations of sky background and point-spread functions, we detect Lyα emission at 100–1000 comoving kpc around z = 3.3 and 5.7 LAEs at the 3.2σ and 3.7σ levels, respectively, and tentatively (=2.0σ) at z = 6.6. The emission is as diffuse as ∼10−20–10−19 erg s−1 cm−2 arcsec−2 and extended beyond the virial radius of a dark matter halo with a mass of 1011 M ⊙. While the observed SBLyα profiles have similar amplitudes at z = 2.2–6.6 within the uncertainties, the intrinsic SBLyα profiles (corrected for the cosmological dimming effect) increase toward high redshifts. This trend may be explained by increasing hydrogen gas density due to the evolution of the cosmic volume. Comparisons with theoretical models suggest that extended Lyα emission around an LAE is powered by resonantly scattered Lyα photons in the CGM and IGM that originate from the inner part of the LAE and/or neighboring galaxies around the LAE.

We present the morphology and stellar population of 27 extremely metal poor galaxies (EMPGs) at $z\sim0$ with metallicities of 0.01--0.1 Z$_{\odot}$. We conduct multi-component surface brightness (SB) profile fitting for the deep Subaru/HSC $i$-band images of the EMPGs with the {\sc Galfit} software, carefully removing the SB contributions of tails. We find that the EMPGs with a median stellar mass of $\log(M_{*}/{\rm M}_{\odot})=6.0$ have a median S{\'e}rsic index of $n=1.1$ and a median effective radius of $r_{\rm e}=200$ pc, suggesting that typical EMPGs have very compact disk. We compare the EMPGs with $z\sim6$ galaxies and local galaxies on the size-mass ($r_{\rm e}$-$M_*$) diagram, and identify that the majority of the EMPGs have a $r_{\rm e}$-$M_*$ relation similar to $z\sim0$ star-forming galaxies rather than $z\sim6$ galaxies. Not every EMPG is a local analog of high-$z$ young galaxies in the $r_{\rm e}$-$M_*$ relation. A spectrum of one pair of EMPG and tail, so far available, indicates that the tail is dynamically related to the EMPG with a median velocity difference of $\Delta V=101\pm32$ km s$^{-1}$. This moderately-large $\Delta V$ cannot be explained by the dynamics of the tail, but likely by the infall on the tail. For the first time, we may identify the metal-poor star-forming system just now infalling into the tail., Comment: ApJ in Press

To determine the dominant sources for cosmic reionization, the evolution history of the global ionizing fraction, and the topology of the ionized regions, we have conducted a deep imaging survey using four narrow-band (NB) and one intermediate-band (IB) filters on the Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), called Cosmic HydrOgen Reionization Unveiled with Subaru (CHORUS). The central wavelengths and full-widths-at-half-maximum of the CHORUS filters are, respectively, 386.2 nm and 5.5 nm for NB387, 526.0 nm and 7.9 nm for NB527, 717.1 nm and 11.1 nm for NB718, 946.2 nm and 33.0 nm for IB945, and 971.2 nm and 11.2 nm for NB973. This combination, including NB921 (921.5 nm and 13.5 nm) from the Subaru Strategic Program with HSC (HSC SSP), are carefully designed, as if they were playing a chorus, to observe multiple spectral features simultaneously, such as Lyman continuum, Ly$\alpha$, C~{\sc iv}, and He~{\sc ii} for $z=2$--$7$. The observing field is the same as that of the deepest footprint of the HSC SSP in the COSMOS field and its effective area is about 1.6 deg$^2$. Here, we present an overview of the CHORUS project, which includes descriptions of the filter design philosophy, observations and data reduction, multiband photometric catalogs, assessments of the imaging quality, measurements of the number counts, and example use cases of the data. All the imaging data, photometric catalogs, masked pixel images, data of limiting magnitudes and point spread functions, results of completeness simulations, and source number counts are publicly available through the HSC SSP database., Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, PASJ open access (https://academic.oup.com/pasj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/pasj/psaa100/5959796), all the data products are available at https://hsc-release.mtk.nao.ac.jp/doc/index.php/chorus

We report the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) discovery of two Ly$\alpha$ blobs (LABs), dubbed z70-1 and z49-1 at $z=6.965$ and $z=4.888$ respectively, that are Ly$\alpha$ emitters with a bright ($\log L_{\rm Ly\alpha}/{\rm [erg\ s^{-1}]}>43.4$) and spatially-extended Ly$\alpha$ emission, and present the photometric and spectroscopic properties of a total of seven LABs; the two new LABs and five previously-known LABs at $z=5.7-6.6$. The z70-1 LAB shows the extended Ly$\alpha$ emission with a scale length of $1.4\pm 0.2$ kpc, about three times larger than the UV continuum emission, making z70-1 the most distant LAB identified to date. All of the 7 LABs, except z49-1, exhibit no AGN signatures such as X-ray emission, {\sc Nv}$\lambda$1240 emission, or Ly$\alpha$ line broadening, while z49-1 has a strong {\sc Civ}$\lambda$1548 emission line indicating an AGN on the basis of the UV-line ratio diagnostics. We carefully model the point-spread functions of the HSC images, and conduct two-component exponential profile fitting to the extended Ly$\alpha$ emission of the LABs. The Ly$\alpha$ scale lengths of the core (star-forming region) and the halo components are $r_{\rm c}=0.6-1.2$ kpc and $r_{\rm h}=2.0-13.8$ kpc, respectively. The average $r_{\rm h}$ of the LABs falls on the extrapolation of the $r_{\rm h}$-Ly$\alpha$ luminosity relation of the Ly$\alpha$ halos around VLT/MUSE star-forming galaxies at the similar redshifts, suggesting that typical LABs at $z\gtrsim5$ are not special objects, but star-forming galaxies at the bright end., Comment: Submitted to ApJ

Strong gravitational lensing by clusters of galaxies probes the mass distribution at the core of each cluster and magnifies the universe behind it. MACS J0417.5-1154 at z=0.443 is one of the most massive clusters known based on weak lensing, X-ray, and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich analyses. Here we compute a strong lens model of MACS J0417 based on Hubble Space Telescope imaging observations collected, in part, by the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS), and recently reported spectroscopic redshifts from the MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT). We measure an Einstein radius of ThetaE=36'' at z = 9 and a mass projected within 200 kpc of M(200 kpc) = 1.78+0.01-0.03x10**14Msol. Using this model, we measure a ratio between the mass attributed to cluster-member galaxy halos and the main cluster halo of order 1:100. We assess the probability to detect magnified high-redshift galaxies in the field of this cluster, both for comparison with RELICS HST results and as a prediction for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Guaranteed Time Observations upcoming for this cluster. Our lensing analysis indicates that this cluster has similar lensing strength to other clusters in the RELICS program. Our lensing analysis predicts a detection of at least a few z~6-8 galaxies behind this cluster, at odds with a recent analysis that yielded no such candidates in this field. Reliable strong lensing models are crucial for accurately predicting the intrinsic properties of lensed galaxies. As part of the RELICS program, our strong lensing model produced with the Lenstool parametric method is publicly available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST)., 20 pages, 8 figures. Accepted to ApJ

Large surveys of galaxy clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer, including the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble and the Frontier Fields, have demonstrated the power of strong gravitational lensing to efficiently deliver large samples of high-redshift galaxies. We extend this strategy through a wider, shallower survey named RELICS, the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey, described here. Our 188-orbit Hubble Treasury Program observed 41 clusters at 0.182 ≤ z ≤ 0.972 with Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and WFC3/IR imaging spanning 0.4-1.7 μm. We selected 21 of the most massive clusters known based on Planck PSZ2 estimates and 20 additional clusters based on observed or inferred lensing strength. RELICS observed 46 WFC3/IR pointings (∼200 arcmin) each with two orbits divided among four filters (F105W, F125W, F140W, and F160W) and ACS imaging as needed to achieve single-orbit depth in each of three filters (F435W, F606W, and F814W). As previously reported by Salmon et al., we discovered over 300 z ∼ 6-10 candidates, including the brightest z ∼ 6 candidates known, and the most distant spatially resolved lensed arc known at z ∼ 10. Spitzer IRAC imaging (945 hr awarded, plus 100 archival, spanning 3.0-5.0 μm) has crucially enabled us to distinguish z ∼ 10 candidates from z ∼ 2 interlopers. For each cluster, two HST observing epochs were staggered by about a month, enabling us to discover 11 supernovae, including 3 lensed supernovae, which we followed up with 20 orbits from our program. Reduced HST images, catalogs, and lens models are available on MAST, and reduced Spitzer images are available on IRSA.© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved., We thank Lindsey Bleem for providing Magellan Megacam LDSS3 images of SPT0254-58 and AS295 prior to RELICS to inform our HST observations of these clusters. We thank Florian Pacaud and Matthias Klein for discussions regarding our AS295 HST pointings. We thank Dale Kocevski for an image of RXC 0142+44 obtained with the University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescope. And we thank Stella Seitz et al. for sharing their HST observations of PLCK G287+32 obtained during the same cycle. We thank the STScI and SSC directors and time allocation committees for enabling these large observing programs. We are grateful to our HST program coordinator William Januszewski for implementing the RELICS HST observations. We thank Jennifer Mack for expert mentoring of our HST image reduction gurus RA and SO. And we thank Gabriel Brammer for providing an updated WFC3/IR hot pixel mask derived from science observations from GO 14114. The RELICS Hubble Treasury Program (GO 14096) consists of observations obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST). HST is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Data from the NASA/ESA HST presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc..(AURA), under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. The HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was developed under NASA contract NAS 5-32864. Spitzer Space Telescope data presented in this paper were obtained from the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Spitzer and IRSA are operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. We gratefully acknowledge support from JPL for the Spitzer analysis. M.B. and V.S. also acknowledge support by NASA through ADAP grant 80NSSC18K0945, NASA/HST through HST-GO-14096, HST-GO-13666, and two awards issued by Spitzer/JPL/Caltech associated with the SRELICS_DEEP and SRELICS programs. Part of this work by W.D. was performed under the auspices of the U.S..DOE by LLNL under contract DE-AC5207NA27344. K.U. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (grant MOST 106-2628M-001-003-MY3) and from Academia Sinica (grant AS-IA107-M01). O.G. is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship under award AST-1602595. S.A.R. was supported by NASA grant HST-GO-14208 from STScI, which is operated by Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. A.M. acknowledges the financial support of the Brazilian funding agency FAPESP (Post-doc fellowshipprocess No. 2014/11806-9). J.H. was supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant (project No. 16599).

We present very faint dropout galaxies at z~6-9 with a stellar mass M* down to M*~10^6Mo that are found in deep optical/near-infrared (NIR) images of the full data sets of the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) program in conjunction with deep ground-based and Spitzer images and gravitational lensing magnification effects. We investigate stellar populations of the HFF dropout galaxies with the optical/NIR photometry and BEAGLE models made of self-consistent stellar population synthesis and photoionization models, carefully including strong nebular emission impacting on the photometry. We identify 357 galaxies with M*~10^6-10^9Mo, and find that a stellar mass to UV luminosity L_UV ratio M*/L_UV is nearly constant at M*~10^6-10^9Mo. Our best-estimate M*/L_UV function is comparable to a model of star-formation duration time of 100 Myr, but 2-7 times higher than the one of 10 Myr assumed in a previous study (at the 5sigma level) that would probably underestimate M* of faint galaxies. We derive the galaxy stellar mass functions (GSMFs) at z~6-9 that agree with those obtained by previous studies with no M*/L_UV assumptions at M*>~10^8Mo, and that extends to M*~10^6Mo. Estimating the stellar mass densities rho* with the GSMFs, we find that rho* smoothly increases from log(rho*/[Mo Mpc^(-3)])=5.91 +0.75/-0.65 at z~9 to 6.21 +0.39/-0.37 at z~6-7, which is consistent with the one estimated from star-formation rate density measurements. In conjunction with the estimates of the galaxy effective radii R_e on the source plane, we have pinpointed two objects with low stellar masses (M*

AURA under NASA [NAS 5-26555]; ACS under NASA [NAS 5-32864]; JPL; U.S. Department of Energy by LLNL [DE-AC52-07NA27344]; [GO-14096]; [GO-12757]; [GO-12477]; [G03-14131X]

Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters has become a powerful tool for probing the high-redshift Universe, magnifying distant and faint background galaxies. Reliable strong lensing (SL) models are crucial for determining the intrinsic properties of distant, magnified sources and for constructing their luminosity function. We present here the first SL analysis of MACS J0308.9+2645 and PLCK G171.9-40.7, two massive galaxy clusters imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). We use the Light-Traces-Mass modeling technique to uncover sets of multiply imaged galaxies and constrain the mass distribution of the clusters. Our SL analysis reveals that both clusters have particularly large Einstein radii ($��_E>30"$ for a source redshift of $z_s=2$), providing fairly large areas with high magnifications, useful for high-redshift galaxy searches ($\sim2$ arcmin$^{2}$ with $��>5$ to $\sim1$ arcmin$^{2}$ with $��>10$, similar to a typical \textit{Hubble Frontier Fields} cluster). We also find that MACS J0308.9+2645 hosts a promising, apparently bright (J$\sim23.2-24.6$ AB), multiply imaged high-redshift candidate at $z\sim6.4$. These images are amongst the brightest high-redshift candidates found in RELICS. Our mass models, including magnification maps, are made publicly available for the community through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes., 14 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

Strong gravitational lensing (SL) is a powerful means to map the distribution of dark matter. In this work, we perform a SL analysis of the prominent X-ray cluster RXJ0152.7-1357 (z=0.83, also known as CL 0152.7-1357) in \textit{Hubble Space Telescope} images, taken in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). On top of a previously known $z=3.93$ galaxy multiply imaged by RXJ0152.7-1357, for which we identify an additional multiple image, guided by a light-traces-mass approach we identify seven new sets of multiply imaged background sources lensed by this cluster, spanning the redshift range [1.79-3.93]. A total of 25 multiple images are seen over a small area of ~0.4 $arcmin^2$, allowing us to put relatively high-resolution constraints on the inner matter distribution. Although modestly massive, the high degree of substructure together with its very elongated shape make RXJ0152.7-1357 a very efficient lens for its size. This cluster also comprises the third-largest sample of z~6-7 candidates in the RELICS survey. Finally, we present a comparison of our resulting mass distribution and magnification estimates with those from a Lenstool model. These models are made publicly available through the MAST archive., 15 Pages, 7 Figures, 4 Tables Accepted for publication in ApJ