We report the identification of a few candidates for being very high-z (z>4), massive (10^11.5 Msun) galaxies using science verification data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The existence of such objects was predicted based on extrapolating the massive end of local and z~0.5 galaxy mass functions. Their number agrees with predictions taking into account the fractional area surveyed so far by DES. Their photometric redshift is obtained via template fitting and we calculate their physical properties using both the template fitting as well as the default neural network photo-z. We further describe the photometric selection, the contamination by low-z sources, including “Green Pea” galaxies and the effect on spectral fitting of using, besides the five DES (grizY) bands, near-infrared points from VISTA VHS (JHKs).
Short talk given at SLAC for the May 2016 DES Collaboration Meeting