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Description
We present a spectroscopic survey of Ly{alpha} emitters (LAEs) at z~5.7 using the multiobject spectrograph M2FS on the Magellan Clay telescope. This is part of a high-redshift galaxy survey carried out in several well-studied deep fields. These fields have deep images in multiple UV/optical bands, including a narrow NB816 band that has allowed an efficient selection of LAE candidates at z~5.7. Our sample consists of 260 LAEs and covers a total effective area of more than 2deg^2^ on the sky. This is so far the largest (spectroscopically confirmed) sample of LAEs at this redshift. We use the secure redshifts and narrowband photometry to measure Ly{alpha} luminosities. We find that these LAEs span a Ly{alpha} luminosity range of ~2x10^42^-5x10^43^erg/s and include some of the most luminous galaxies known at z>=5.7 in terms of Ly{alpha} luminosity. Most of them have rest-frame equivalent widths between 20 and 300{AA}, and more luminous Ly{alpha} emission lines tend to have broader line widths. We detect a clear offset of ~20{AA} between the observed Ly{alpha} wavelength distribution and the NB816 filter transmission curve, which can be explained by the intergalactic medium absorption of continua blueward of Ly{alpha} in the high-redshift spectra. This sample is being used to study the Ly{alpha} luminosity function and galaxy properties at z~5.7.
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