zBootes: z-Band Photometry in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey Bootes Field

We present zBootes, a new z-band photometric imaging campaign of 7.62 deg2 in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS) Bootes field. In this paper, all of the images for this survey are released as well as the associated catalogs. The final zBootes catalogs are complete (at the 50% level) to 22.7 mag over 50% of the field. With these depths, the zBootes images should be sensitive to L* galaxies to z ~ 1 over much of the survey area. These data have several possible applications including searching for and characterizing high-redshift quasars and brown dwarfs and providing added constraints to photometric redshift determinations of galaxies and active galaxies to moderate redshift. The zBootes imaging adds photometric data at a new wavelength to the existing wealth of multiwavelength observations of the NDWFS Bootes field.