Spitzer UltRa Faint SUrvey Program (SURFS UP). II. IRAC-detected Lyman-Break Galaxies at 6 ≲ z ≲ 10 behind Strong-lensing Clusters

Abstract

We study the stellar population properties of the IRAC-detected 6 ≲ z ≲ 10 galaxy candidates from the Spitzer UltRa Faint SUrvey Program. Using the Lyman Break selection technique, we find a total of 17 galaxy candidates at 6 ≲ z ≲ 10 from Hubble Space Telescope images (including the full-depth images from the Hubble Frontier Fields program for MACS 1149 and MACS 0717) that have detections at signal-to-noise ratios ≥ 3 in at least one of the IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 μm channels. According to the best mass models available for the surveyed galaxy clusters, these IRAC-detected galaxy candidates are magnified by factors of ∼1.2-5.5. Due to the magnification of the foreground galaxy clusters, the rest-frame UV absolute magnitudes M<SUB>1600</SUB> are between -21.2 and -18.9 mag, while their intrinsic stellar masses are between 2 × 10<SUP>8</SUP>M<SUB>☉</SUB> and 2.9 × 10<SUP>9</SUP>M<SUB>☉</SUB>. We identify two Lyα emitters in our sample from the Keck DEIMOS spectra, one at z<SUB>Lyα</SUB> = 6.76 (in RXJ 1347) and one at z<SUB>Lyα</SUB> = 6.32 (in MACS 0454). We find that 4 out of 17 z ≳ 6 galaxy candidates are favored by z ≲ 1 solutions when IRAC fluxes are included in photometric redshift fitting. We also show that IRAC [3.6]-[4.5] color, when combined with photometric redshift, can be used to identify galaxies which likely have strong nebular emission lines or obscured active galactic nucleus contributions within certain redshift windows.