X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The instrument covers, in a single exposure, the spectral range from 300 to 2500 nm. It is designed to maximize the sensitivity in this spectral range through dichroic splitting in three arms with optimized optics, coatings, dispersive elements and detectors. It operates at intermediate spectral resolution (R ∼ 4000−17 000, depending on wavelength and slit width) with fixed échelle spectral format (prism cross-dispersers) in the three arms. It includes a 1.8 × 4 integral field unit as an alternative to the 11 long slits. A dedicated data reduction package delivers fully calibrated two-dimensional and extracted spectra over the full wavelength range. We describe the main characteristics of the instrument and present its performance as measured during commissioning, science verification and the first months of science operations.

Candidates for the modest galaxies that formed most of the stars in the early universe, at redshifts z > 7, have been found in large numbers with extremely deep restframe-UV imaging 1 . But it has proved difficult for existing spectrographs to characterise them in the UV 2,3,4 . The detailed properties of these galaxies could be measured from dust and cool gas emission at far-infrared wavelengths if the galaxies have become sufficiently enriched in dust and metals. So far, however, the most distant UV-selected galaxy detected in dust emission is only at z = 3.2 5 , and recent results have cast doubt on whether dust and molecules can be found in typical galaxies at this early epoch 6,7,8 . Here we report thermal dust emission from an archetypal early universe starforming galaxy, A1689-zD1. We detect its stellar continuum in spectroscopy and determine its redshift to be z = 7.5±0.2 from a spectroscopic detection of the Lyα break. A1689-zD1 is representative of the star-forming population during reionisation 9 , with a total star-formation rate of about 12 M ⊙ yr -1 . The galaxy is highly evolved: it has a large stellar mass, and is heavily enriched in dust, with a dust-to-gas ratio close to that of the Milky Way. Dusty, evolved galaxies are thus present among the fainter star-forming population at z > 7, in spite of the very short time since they first appeared.As part of a programme to investigate galaxies at z > 7 with the X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope, we observed the candidate high-redshift galaxy, A1689-zD1, behind the lensing galaxy cluster, Abell 1689 (Fig. 1). The source was originally identified 10 as a candidate z > 7 system from deep imaging with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. Suggested to be at z = 7.6±0.4 from photometry fitting, it is gravitationally magnified by a factor of 9.3 by the galaxy cluster 10 , and though intrinsically faint, because of the gravitational amplification, is one of the brightest candidate z > 7 galaxies known. The X-shooter observations were carried out on several nights between March 2010 and March 2012 with a total time of 16 hours on target.The galaxy continuum is detected and can be seen in the binned spectrum (Fig. 2). The Lya cutoff is at 1035±24 nm and defines the redshift, z = 7.5±0.2. It is thus one of the most distant galaxies known to date to be confirmed via spectroscopy, and the only galaxy at z > 7 where the redshift is determined from spectroscopy of its stellar continuum. The spectral slope is blue; using a power-law fit, F λ ∝ λ -β , β = 2.0 ± 0.1. The flux break is sharp, and greater than a factor of ten in depth. In addition, no line emission is detected, ruling out a different redshift solution for the galaxy. Line emission is excluded to lensing-corrected depths of 3×10 -19 erg cm -2 s -1 (3σ) in the absence of sky emission lines, making this by far the deepest intrinsic spectrum published of a reionization era object, highlighting the difficulty of obtaining UV redshifts for objects at this epoch that are not strongly domin...

We present new measurements of the free-streaming of warm dark matter (WDM) from Lyman-α flux-power spectra. We use data from the medium resolution, intermediate redshift XQ-100 sample observed with the X-shooter spectrograph (z = 3−4.2) and the high-resolution, high-redshift sample used in obtained with the HIRES/MIKE spectrographs (z = 4.2 − 5.4). Based on further improved modelling of the dependence of the Lyman-α flux-power spectrum on the freestreaming of dark matter, cosmological parameters, as well as the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) with hydrodynamical simulations, we obtain the following limits, expressed as the equivalent mass of thermal relic WDM particles. The XQ-100 flux power spectrum alone gives a lower limit of 1.4 keV, the re-analysis of the HIRES/MIKE sample gives 4.1 keV while the combined analysis gives our best and significantly strengthened lower limit of 5.3 keV (all 2σ C.L.). The further improvement in the joint analysis is partly due to the fact that the two data sets have different degeneracies between astrophysical and cosmological parameters that are broken when the data sets are combined, and more importantly on chosen priors on the thermal evolution. These results all assume that the temperature evolution of the IGM can be modelled as a power law in redshift. Allowing for a non-smooth evolution of the temperature of the IGM with sudden temperature changes of up to 5000K reduces the lower limit for the combined analysis to 3.5 keV. A WDM with smaller thermal relic masses would require, however, a sudden temperature jump of 5000 K or more in the narrow redshift interval z = 4.6 − 4.8, in disagreement with observations of the thermal history based on high-resolution resolution Lyman-α forest data and expectations for photo-heating and cooling in the low density IGM at these redshifts.

Abstract. We study a magnitude-limited sample of 10 gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies with known spectroscopic redshifts (0.43 < z < 2.04). From an analysis of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs), based on published broad-band optical and near-infrared photometry, we derive photometric redshifts, galaxy types, ages of the dominant stellar populations, internal extinctions, and ultraviolet (UV) star-formation rates (SFRs) of the host galaxies. The photometric redshifts are quite accurate despite the heterogeneous nature of the sample: the rms errors are σ(z) = 0.21 and σ(∆z/(1 + z spec )) = 0.16 with no significant systematic offsets. All the host galaxies have SEDs similar to young starburst galaxies with moderate to low extinction. A comparison of specific SFRs with those of high-redshift galaxies in the Hubble Deep Fields shows that GRB hosts are most likely similar to the field galaxies with the largest specific SFRs. On the other hand, GRB hosts are not significantly younger than starburst field galaxies at similar redshifts, but are found to be younger than a sample of all types of field galaxies.