No strong dependence of Lyman continuum leakage on physical properties of star-forming galaxies at $\mathbf{3.1 \lesssim z \lesssim 3.5}$

We present Lyman continuum (LyC) radiation escape fraction ( fesc) measurements for 183 spectroscopically confirmed starforming galaxies in the redshift range 3.11 < z < 3.53 in the Chandra Deep Field South. We use ground-based imaging to measure fesc, and use groundand space-based photometry to derive galaxy physical properties using spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting. We additionally derive [O iii] +Hβ equivalent widths (that fall in the observed K band) by including nebular emission in the SED fitting. After removing foreground contaminants, we report the discovery of 11 new candidate LyC leakers, with absolute LyC escape fractions, fesc in the range 0.07 − 0.52. Most galaxies in our sample (≈ 94%) do not show any LyC leakage, and we place 1σ upper limits of fesc < 0.07 through weighted averaging, where the Lyman-break selected galaxies have fesc < 0.07 and ‘blindly’ discovered galaxies with no prior photometric selection have fesc < 0.10. We additionally measure fesc < 0.09 for extreme emission line galaxies in our sample with rest-frame [O iii] +Hβ equivalent widths > 300Å. For the candidate LyC leakers, we do not find a strong dependence of fesc on their stellar masses and/or specific star-formation rates, and no correlation between fesc and EW0([O iii] +Hβ). We suggest that this lack of correlations may be explained by viewing angle and/or non-coincident timescales of starburst activity and periods of high fesc. Alternatively, escaping radiation may predominantly occur in highly localised star-forming regions, thereby obscuring any global trends with galaxy properties. Both hypotheses have important consequences for models of reionisation.