An AzTEC 1.1 mm survey of the GOODS-N field - I. Maps, catalogue and source statistics

We have conducted a deep and uniform 1.1 mm survey of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-N) field with AzTEC on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Here, we present the first results from this survey including maps, the source catalogue and 1.1 mm number counts. The results presented here were obtained from a 245 arcmin(2) region with a near uniform coverage to a depth of 0.96-1.16 mJy beam(-1). Our robust catalogue contains 28 source candidates detected with S/N >= 3.75, only similar to 1-2 of which are expected to be spurious detections. Of these source candidates, eight are also detected by Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array ( SCUBA) at 850 mu m in regions where there is a good overlap between the two surveys. The major advantage of our survey over that with SCUBA is the uniformity of coverage. We calculate number counts using two different techniques: the first using a frequentist parameter estimation and the second using a Bayesian method. The two sets of results are in good agreement. We find that the 1.1 mm differential number counts are well described in the 2-6 mJy range by the functional form dN/dS = N'(S'/S) exp(-S/S') with fitted parameters S' = 1.25 +/- 0.38 mJy and dN/dS = 300 +/- 90 mJy(-1) deg(-2) at 3 mJy.