ODIN: Spectroscopic Validation of Lyα-emitting Galaxy Samples with DESI
The One-hundred-deg$^{2}$ DECam Imaging in Narrowbands (ODIN) survey is conducting the widest-field deep narrowband (NB) imaging of the equatorial and southern skies. ODIN uses three custom-built NB filters that sample Lyα-emitting galaxies (LAEs) within thin cosmic slices centered at z = 2.4, 3.1, and 4.5. In this work, we utilize extensive DESI spectroscopy of ODIN-selected galaxies in the COSMOS and XMM-LSS fields to validate our LAE selection. Exposures of 2-4 hr with DESI yielded redshift confirmation of 3075 ODIN LAE candidates with NB magnitudes brighter than 26 mag. Restricting to objects that yield high-confidence redshifts, the confirmation rates are (93%, 96%, 92%) at z = (2.4, 3.1, 4.5). The primary contaminants consist of active galactic nuclei at the expected Lyα-redshift range and lower redshifts (C iv , C iii ]), with the remainder being star-forming galaxies ([O ii ] and [O iii ]). We find minimal contamination from [O ii ] emitters in our sample (≲1%), implying that our rest-frame equivalent width (REW) > 20 Å NB excess photometry requirement is sufficient to remove them.