The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey - Public release of 1599 redshifts to I$\mathsf{_{AB}\leq24}$ across the Chandra Deep Field South

This paper presents the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey around the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). We have measured 1599 new redshifts with VIMOS on the European Observatory Very Large Telescope – UT3, in an area $21 \times 21.6$ arcmin 2 , including 784 redshifts in the Hubble Space Telescope – Advanced Camera for Surveys GOODS area. 30% of all objects with $I_{AB}=24$ have been observed independently of magnitude, indicating that the sample is purely magnitude limited. We have reached an unprecedented completeness level of 84% in terms of the ratio of secure measurements vs. observed objects, while 95% of all objects have a redshift measurement. A total of 1452 galaxies, 139 stars, 8 QSOs have a redshift identification, 141 of these being unsecure measurements. The redshift distribution down to $I_{AB}=24$ is peaked at a median redshift $z=0.73$, with a significant high redshift tail extending up to ~4. Several high density peaks in the distribution of galaxies are identified. In particular, the strong peak at $z=0.735$ contains more than 130 galaxies in a velocity range $\pm2000$ km s -1 distributed all across the transverse ~20 h -1 Mpc of the survey. We are releasing all redshifts to the community, along with the cross identification with HST-ACS GOODS sources on the CENCOS database environment http://cencosw.oamp.fr.