We have carried out spectroscopic observations in four cluster fields using Subaru's FOCAS multislit spectrograph and obtained spectra for 103 bright disc field and cluster galaxies at 0.06<=z<=1.20. 77 of these show emission lines, and 33 provide reasonably secure determinations of the galaxies' rotation velocity. The rotation velocities, luminosities, colours and emission-line properties of these galaxies are used to study the possible effects of the cluster environment on the star formation history of the galaxies.
We have identified 335 galaxy cluster and group candidates, 106 of which are at z>1, using a 4.5um-selected sample of objects from a 7.25deg^2^ region in the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) Shallow Survey. Clusters were identified as three-dimensional overdensities using a wavelet algorithm, based on photometric redshift probability distributions derived from IRAC and NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey data. We estimate only ~10% of the detections are spurious. To date 12 of the z>1 candidates have been confirmed spectroscopically, at redshifts from 1.06 to 1.41. Velocity dispersions of ~750km/s for two of these argue for total cluster masses well above 10^14^M_{sun}_, as does the mass estimated from the rest-frame near-infrared stellar luminosity. Although not selected to contain a red sequence, some evidence for red sequences is present in the spectroscopically confirmed clusters, and brighter galaxies are systematically redder than the mean galaxy color in clusters at all redshifts.
We present the discovery of three protoclusters at z~3-4 with spectroscopic confirmation in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Fields. In these fields, we investigate the large-scale projected sky distribution of z~3-6 Lyman-break galaxies and identify 21 protocluster candidates from regions that are overdense at more than 4{sigma} overdensity significance. Based on cosmological simulations, it is expected that more than 76% of these candidates will evolve into a galaxy cluster of at least a halo mass of 10^14^ M_{sun}_ at z=0. We perform follow-up spectroscopy for eight of the candidates using Subaru/FOCAS, Keck II/DEIMOS, and Gemini-N/GMOS. In total we target 462 dropout candidates and obtain 138 spectroscopic redshifts. We confirm three real protoclusters at z=3-4 with more than five members spectroscopically identified and find one to be an incidental overdense region by mere chance alignment. The other four candidate regions at z~5-6 require more spectroscopic follow-up in order to be conclusive. A z=3.67 protocluster, which has 11 spectroscopically confirmed members, shows a remarkable core-like structure composed of a central small region (<0.5 physical Mpc) and an outskirts region (~1.0 physical Mpc). The Ly{alpha} equivalent widths of members of the protocluster are significantly smaller than those of field galaxies at the same redshift, while there is no difference in the UV luminosity distributions. These results imply that some environmental effects start operating as early as at z~4 along with the growth of the protocluster structure. This study provides an important benchmark for our analysis of protoclusters in the upcoming Subaru/HSC imaging survey and its spectroscopic follow-up with the Subaru/PFS that will detect thousands of protoclusters up to z~6.
