The environments of Ly α blobs – I. Wide-field Ly α imaging of TN J1338−1942, a powerful radio galaxy at z ≃ 4.1 associated with a giant Ly α nebula

We exploit wide-field Ly α imaging with Subaru to probe the environment around TN J1338−1942, a powerful radio galaxy with a > 100 kpc Ly α halo at z = 4.11. We used a sample of Ly α emitters (LAEs) down to log (LLyα[ erg s−1]) ∼ 42.8 to measure the galaxy density around TN J1338−1942, compared to a control sample from a blank field taken with the same instrument. We found that TN J1338−1942 resides in a region with a peak overdensity of δLAE = 2.8 ± 0.5 on scales of 8 h− 1 Mpc (on the sky) and 112 h− 1 Mpc (line of sight) in comoving coordinates. Adjacent to this overdensity, we found a strong underdensity where virtually no LAEs are detected. We used a semi-analytical model of LAEs derived from the Millennium Simulation to compare our results with theoretical predictions. While the theoretical density distribution is consistent with the blank field, overdense regions such as that around TN J1338−1942 are very rare, with a number density of 6.4 × 10− 8 Mpc− 3 (comoving), corresponding to the densest