CANDELSz7: a large spectroscopic survey of CANDELS galaxies in the reionization epoch

We present the results of CANDELSz7, a European Southern Observatory (ESO) Large Program aimed at spectroscopically confirming a homogeneous sample of z ≃ 6 and z ≃ 7 star forming galaxies. The candidates were selected in the GOODS-South, UDS, and COSMOS fields using the official CANDELS catalogs based on H160-band detections. Standard color criteria, which were tailored depending on the ancillary multi-wavelength data available for each field, were applied to select more than 160 candidate galaxies at z ≃ 6 and z ≃ 7. Deep, medium-resolution FORS2 spectroscopic observations were then conducted with integration times ranging from 12 to 20 h to reach a Lyα flux limit of approximately 1 − 3 × 10−18 erg s−1 cm−2 at 3σ. We could determine a spectroscopic redshift for about 40% of the galaxies, mainly through the detection of a single emission line that we interpret as Lyα emission, or for some of the brightest objects (H160 ≤ 25.5) from the presence of faint continuum and a sharp drop that we interpret as a Lyα break. In this paper we present the redshifts and main properties of 65 newly confirmed high-redshift galaxies. Adding previous proprietary and archival data we assemble a sample of ≃260 galaxies that we use to explore the evolution of the Lyα fraction in Lyman break galaxies and the change in the shape of the emission line between z ∼ 6 and z ∼ 7. We also discuss the accuracy of the CANDELS photometric redshifts in this redshift range