Texas Spectroscopic Search for Ly$\alpha$ Emission at the End of
  Reionization I. Constraining the Ly$\alpha$ Equivalent Width Distribution at
  6.0 < $z$ < 7.0
  The distribution of Ly$\alpha$ emission is an presently accessible method for
studying the state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) into the reionization era.
We carried out deep spectroscopic observations in order to search for
Ly$\alpha$ emission from galaxies with photometric redshifts $z$ = 5.5 - 8.3
selected from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy
Survey (CANDELS). Utilizing data from the Keck/DEIMOS spectrograph, we explore
a wavelength coverage of Ly$\alpha$ emission at $z$ ~ 5 - 7 with four nights of
spectroscopic observations for 118 galaxies, detecting five emission lines with
~ 5$\sigma$ significance: three in the GOODS-N and two in the GOODS-S field. We
constrain the equivalent width (EW) distribution of Ly$\alpha$ emission by
comparing the number of detected objects with the expected number constructed
from detailed simulations of mock emission lines that account for the
observational conditions (e.g., exposure time, wavelength coverage, and sky
emission) and galaxy photometric redshift probability distribution functions.
The Ly$\alpha$ EW distribution is well described by an exponential form,
$\text{dN/dEW}\propto \text{exp(-EW/}W_0)$, characterized by the $e$-folding
scale ($W_0$) of ~ 60 - 100$\AA$ at 0.3 < $z$ < 6. By contrast, our measure of
the Ly$\alpha$ EW distribution at 6.0 < $z$ < 7.0 rejects a Ly$\alpha$ EW
distribution with $W_0$ > 36.4$\AA$ (125.3$\AA$) at 1$\sigma$ (2$\sigma$)
significance. This provides additional evidence that the EW distribution of
Ly$\alpha$ declines at $z$ > 6, suggesting an increasing fraction of neutral
hydrogen in the IGM at that epoch.
