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  • Mapping the Most Massive Ov...
    Cai, Zheng; Fan, Xiaohui; Bian, Fuyan; Zabludoff, Ann; Yang, Yujin; Prochaska, J. Xavier; McGreer, Ian; Zheng, Zhen-Ya; Kashikawa, Nobunari; Wang, Ran; Frye, Brenda; Green, Richard; Jiang, Linhua

    Astrophysical journal/˜The œAstrophysical journal, 04/2017, Volume: 839, Issue: 2
    Journal Article

    Cosmological simulations suggest a strong correlation between high optical-depth Ly absorbers, which arise from the intergalactic medium, and 3D mass overdensities on scales of 10-30 comoving Mpc. By examining the absorption spectra of ∼80,000 QSO sight lines over a volume of 0.1 Gpc3 in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), we have identified an extreme overdensity, BOSS1441, which contains a rare group of strong Ly absorbers at . This absorber group is associated with six QSOs at the same redshift on a 30 comoving Mpc scale. Using Mayall/MOSAIC narrowband and broadband imaging, we detect Ly emitters (LAEs) down to and reveal a large-scale structure of LAEs in this field. Our follow-up LBT observations have spectroscopically confirmed 20 galaxies in the density peak. We show that BOSS1441 has an LAE overdensity of 10.8 2.6 on a 15 comoving Mpc scale, which could collapse to a massive cluster with M 1015 at . This overdensity is among the most massive large-scale structures at discovered to date.