Exploring HETDEX Pilot Survey Lyman-alpha Emitters with Spectral Energy Distribution Fitting

We use photometry spanning from the rest-frame UV to the rest-frame NIR to fit the individual spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 67 bright Ly-alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) discovered in the HETDEX Pilot Survey. We find that bright LAEs in the redshift range 1.9 $<$ z $<$ 3.5 are quite heterogeneous. Our LAE masses span more than three orders of magnitude and are distributed in a manner that suggests that the objects are drawn in an almost uniform manner from the underlying galaxy mass function. This diversity is also reflect in the LAEs' dust content: while most of our objects are dust poor, some of the more massive LAEs are dust-rich, with differential extinctions as large as E(B-V) $\sim$ 1.2. We find no significant correlation between half-light radius and stellar mass but we show that the Ly-alpha escape fraction does depend on mass, with low-mass systems being more efficient Ly-alpha emitters. Finally, we present evidence which suggests that there is an upper limit to the mass-specific star formation rates of Ly-alpha emitting galaxies.