The Lyman Continuum Escape Fraction of Star-forming Galaxies at \(2.4\lesssim z\lesssim3.7\) from UVCANDELS

The UltraViolet Imaging of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey Fields (UVCANDELS) survey is a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Cycle-26 Treasury Program, allocated in total 164 orbits of primary Wide-Field Camera 3 Ultraviolet and Visible light F275W imaging with coordinated parallel Advanced Camera for Surveys F435W imaging, on four of the five premier extragalactic survey fields: GOODS-N, GOODS-S, EGS, and COSMOS. We introduce this survey by presenting a thorough search for galaxies at \(z\gtrsim2.4\) that leak significant Lyman continuum (LyC) radiation, as well as a stringent constraint on the LyC escape fraction (\(f_{\rm esc}\)) from stacking the UV images of a population of star-forming galaxies with secure redshifts. Our extensive search for LyC emission and stacking analysis benefit from the catalogs of high-quality spectroscopic redshifts compiled from archival ground-based data and HST slitless spectroscopy, carefully vetted by dedicated visual inspection efforts. We report a sample of five galaxies as individual LyC leaker candidates, showing \(f_{\rm esc}^{\rm rel}\gtrsim60\%\) estimated using detailed Monte Carlo analysis of intergalactic medium attenuation. We develop a robust stacking method to apply to five samples of in total 85 non-detection galaxies in the redshift range of \(z\in[2.4,3.7]\). Most stacks give tight 2-\(\sigma\) upper limits below \(f_{\rm esc}^{\rm rel}