Galaxy clusters and groups in the ALHAMBRA Survey

We present a catalogue of 348 galaxy clusters and groups with $0.2<z<1.2$ selected in the 2.78 $deg^2$ ALHAMBRA Survey. The high precision of our photometric redshifts, close to $1\%$, and the wide spread of the seven ALHAMBRA pointings ensure that this catalogue has better mass sensitivity and is less affected by cosmic variance than comparable samples. The detection has been carried out with the Bayesian Cluster Finder (BCF), whose performance has been checked in ALHAMBRA-like light-cone mock catalogues. Great care has been taken to ensure that the observable properties of the mocks photometry accurately correspond to those of real catalogues. From our simulations, we expect to detect galaxy clusters and groups with both $70\%$ completeness and purity down to dark matter halo masses of $M_h\sim3\times10^{13}\rm M_{\odot}$ for $z<0.85$. Cluster redshifts are expected to be recovered with $\sim0.6\%$ precision for $z<1$. We also expect to measure cluster masses with $\sigma_{M_h|M^*_{CL}}\sim0.25-0.35\, dex$ precision down to $\sim3\times10^{13}\rm M_{\odot}$, masses which are $50\%$ smaller than those reached by similar work. We have compared these detections with previous optical, spectroscopic and X-rays work, finding an excellent agreement with the rates reported from the simulations. We have also explored the overall properties of these detections such as the presence of a colour-magnitude relation, the evolution of the photometric blue fraction and the clustering of these sources in the different ALHAMBRA fields. Despite the small numbers, we observe tentative evidence that, for a fixed stellar mass, the environment is playing a crucial role at lower redshifts (z$<$0.5).Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Catalogues and figures available online and under the following link: http://bascaso.net46.net/ALHAMBRA_clusters.htm

The impact from survey depth and resolution on the morphological classification of galaxies

We consistently analyse for the first time the impact of survey depth and spatial resolution on the most used morphological parameters for classifying galaxies through non-parametric methods: Abraham and Conselice-Bershady concentration indices, Gini, M20moment of light, asymmetry, and smoothness. Three different non-local data sets are used, Advanced Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical (ALHAMBRA) and Subaru/XMMNewton Deep Survey (SXDS, examples of deep ground-based surveys), and Cosmos Evolution Survey (COSMOS, deep space-based survey). We used a sample of 3000 local, visually classified galaxies, measuring their morphological parameters at their real redshifts (z ~ 0). Then we simulated them to match the redshift and magnitude distributions of galaxies in the non-local surveys. The comparisons of the two sets allow us to put constraints on the use of each parameter for morphological classification and evaluate the effectiveness of the commonly used morphological diagnostic diagrams. All analysed parameters suffer from biases related to spatial resolution and depth, the impact of the former being much stronger. When including asymmetry and smoothness in classification diagrams, the noise effects must be taken into account carefully, especially for ground-based surveys. M20 is significantly affected, changing both the shape and range of its distribution at all brightness levels. We suggest that diagnostic diagrams based on 2-3 parameters should be avoided when classifying galaxies in ground-based surveys, independently of their brightness; for COSMOS they should be avoided for galaxies fainter than F814 = 23.0. These results can be applied directly to surveys similar to ALHAMBRA, SXDS and COSMOS, and also can serve as an upper/lower limit for shallower/deeper ones.MP acknowledge financial support from JAE-Doc programme of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), co-funded by the European Social Fund. This research was supported by the Junta de Andalucia through project TIC114, and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) through projects AYA2010-15169, AYA2013-42227-P, and AYA2013-43188-P.Peer Reviewe

I. MUFFIT: A multi-filter fitting code for stellar population diagnostics

Numerical methods and codes.-- et al.[Aims]: We present MUFFIT, a new generic code optimized to retrieve the main stellar population parameters of galaxies in photometric multi-filter surveys, and check its reliability and feasibility with real galaxy data from the ALHAMBRA survey. [Methods]: Making use of an error-weighted X2-test, we compare the multi-filter fluxes of galaxies with the synthetic photometry of mixtures of two single stellar populations at different redshifts and extinctions, to provide the most likely range of stellar population parameters (mainly ages and metallicities), extinctions, redshifts, and stellar masses. To improve the diagnostic reliability, MUFFIT identifies and removes from the analysis those bands that are significantly affected by emission lines. The final parameters and their uncertainties are derived by a Monte Carlo method, using the individual photometric uncertainties in each band. Finally, we discuss the accuracies, degeneracies, and reliability of MUFFIT using both simulated and real galaxies from ALHAMBRA, comparing with results from the literature. [Results]: MUFFIT is a precise and reliable code to derive stellar population parameters of galaxies in ALHAMBRA. Using the results from photometric-redshift codes as input, MUFFIT improves the photometric-redshift accuracy by ∼10-20%. MUFFIT also detects nebular emissions in galaxies, providing physical information about their strengths. The stellar masses derived from MUFFIT show excellent agreement with the COSMOS and SDSS values. In addition, the retrieved age-metallicity locus for a sample of z ≤ 0.22 early-type galaxies in ALHAMBRA at different stellar mass bins are in very good agreement with the ones from SDSS spectroscopic diagnostics. Moreover, a one-to-one comparison between the redshifts, ages, metallicities, and stellar masses derived spectroscopically for SDSS and by MUFFIT for ALHAMBRA reveals good qualitative agreements in all the parameters, hence reinforcing the strengths of multi-filter galaxy data and optimized analysis techniques, like MUFFIT, to conduct reliable stellar population studies.L.A.D.G. acknowledges support from the "Caja Rural de Teruel" for developing this research. A.J.C. is a Ramon y Cajal Fellow of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. This work has been supported by the "Programa Nacional de Astronomia y Astrofisica" of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant AYA2012-30789, as well as by FEDER funds and the Government of Aragon, through the Research Group E103. L.A.D.G. also thanks the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) and Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) for offering the opportunity to support and develop part of this research in collaboration with I.F. MINECO grants AYA2010-15081, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-01, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2011-29517-C03-01, AYA2013-40611-P, AYA2013-42227-P, AYA2013-43188-P, AYA2013-48623-C2-1, AYA2013-48623-C2-2, and AYA2014-58861-C3-1 are also acknowledged, together with Generalitat Valenciana projects Prometeo 2009/064 and PROMETEOII/2014/060, and Junta de Andalucia grants TIC114, JA2828, and P10-FQM-6444. MP acknowledges financial support from the JAE-Doc programme of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), co-funded by the European Social Fund.Peer Reviewe

The ALHAMBRA survey: Bayesian photometric redshifts with 23 bands for 3 deg2

A. Molino et al.The Advance Large Homogeneous Area Medium-Band Redshift Astronomical (ALHAMBRA) survey has observed eight different regions of the sky, including sections of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), DEEP2, European Large-Area Infrared Space Observatory Survey (ELAIS), Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North (GOODS-N), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Groth fields using a new photometric system with 20 optical, contiguous ~300-Å filters plus the JHKs bands. The filter system is designed to optimize the effective photometric redshift depth of the survey, while having enough wavelength resolution for the identification of faint emission lines. The observations, carried out with the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope using the wide-field optical camera Large Area Imager for Calar Alto (LAICA) and the near-infrared (NIR) instrument Omega-2000, represent a total of ~700 h of on-target science images. Here we present multicolour point-spread function (PSF) corrected photometry and photometric redshifts for ~438 000 galaxies, detected in synthetic F814W images. The catalogues are complete down to a magnitude I~24.5AB and cover an effective area of 2.79 deg2. Photometric zero-points were calibrated using stellar transformation equations and refined internally, using a new technique based on the highly robust photometric redshifts measured for emission-line galaxies. We calculate Bayesian photometric redshifts with the Bayesian Photometric Redshift (BPZ)2.0 code, obtaining a precision of δz/(1+zs)=1 per cent for I<22.5 and δz/(1+zs)=1.4 per cent for 22.5<I<24.5. The global n(z) distribution shows a mean redshift 〈z〉=0.56 for I<22.5 AB and 〈z〉=0.86 for I<24.5 AB. Given its depth and small cosmic variance, ALHAMBRA is a unique data set for galaxy evolution studies. © 2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MICINN under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Program grant CSD2006-00070: First Science with the GTC. Part of this work was supported by Junta de Andalucía, through grant TIC-114 and the Excellence Project P08-TIC-3531, and by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation through grants AYA2006-1456, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2010-22111-C03-01 and Generalitat Valenciana project Prometeo 2009/064.Peer Reviewe

The ALHAMBRA survey: accurate merger fractions derived by PDF analysis of photometrically close pairs

[Aims]: Our goal is to develop and test a novel methodology to compute accurate close-pair fractions with photometric redshifts. [Methods]: We improved the currently used methodologies to estimate the merger fraction fm from photometric redshifts by (i) using the full probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the sources in redshift space; (ii) including the variation in the luminosity of the sources with z in both the sample selection and the luminosity ratio constrain; and (iii) splitting individual PDFs into red and blue spectral templates to reliably work with colour selections.We tested the performance of our new methodology with the PDFs provided by the ALHAMBRA photometric survey. [Results]: The merger fractions and rates from the ALHAMBRA survey agree excellently well with those from spectroscopic work for both the general population and red and blue galaxies. With the merger rate of bright (MB ≤ -20 - 1:1z) galaxies evolving as (1 + z)n, the power-law index n is higher for blue galaxies (n = 2:7 0:5) than for red galaxies (n = 1:3 0:4), confirming previous results. Integrating the merger rate over cosmic time, we find that the average number of mergers per galaxy since z = 1 is Nm red = 0:57 0:05 for red galaxies and Nm blue = 0:26 0:02 for blue galaxies. [Conclusions]: Our new methodology statistically exploits all the available information provided by photometric redshift codes and yields accurate measurements of the merger fraction by close pairs from using photometric redshifts alone. Current and future photometric surveys will benefit from this new methodology.This work has been mainly funded by the FITE (Fondos de Inversiones de Teruel) and the projects AYA2012-30789, AYA2006-14056, and CSD2007-00060. We also acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Government grants AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-01, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, and AYA2013-48623-C2-2, from the Aragón Government through the Research Group E103, from the Junta de Andalucía through TIC-114 and the Excellence Project P08-TIC-03531, and from the Generalitat Valenciana through the projects Prometeo/2009/064 and PrometeoII/2014/060. A.J.C. is Ramón y Cajal fellow of the Spanish government. M.P. acknowledges the financial support from JAE-Doc program of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), co-funded by the European Social Fund.Peer Reviewe

The ALHAMBRA survey: Estimation of the clustering signal encoded in the cosmic variance

[Aims]: The relative cosmic variance (σv) is a fundamental source of uncertainty in pencil-beam surveys and, as a particular case of count-in-cell statistics, can be used to estimate the bias between galaxies and their underlying dark-matter distribution. Our goal is to test the significance of the clustering information encoded in the σv measured in the ALHAMBRA survey. [Methods]: We measure the cosmic variance of several galaxy populations selected with B-band luminosity at 0.35 ≤ z< 1.05 as the intrinsic dispersion in the number density distribution derived from the 48 ALHAMBRA subfields. We compare the observational σv with the cosmic variance of the dark matter expected from the theory, σv,dm. This provides an estimation of the galaxy bias b. [Results]: The galaxy bias from the cosmic variance is in excellent agreement with the bias estimated by two-point correlation function analysis in ALHAMBRA. This holds for different redshift bins, for red and blue subsamples, and for several B-band luminosity selections. We find that b increases with the B-band luminosity and the redshift, as expected from previous work. Moreover, red galaxies have a larger bias than blue galaxies, with a relative bias of brel = 1.4 ± 0.2. [Conclusions]: Our results demonstrate that the cosmic variance measured in ALHAMBRA is due to the clustering of galaxies and can be used to characterise the σv affecting pencil-beam surveys. In addition, it can also be used to estimate the galaxy bias b from a method independent of correlation functions.This work has been mainly funded by the FITE (Fondos de Inversiones de Teruel) and the projects AYA2012-30789, AYA2006-14056, and CSD2007-00060. We also acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER funds through grants AYA2010-15081, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-01, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2011-29517-C03-01, AYA2012-39620, AYA2013-40611-P, AYA2013-42227-P, AYA2013-43188-P, AYA2013-48623-C2-1, AYA2013-48623-C2-2, ESP2013-48274, AYA2014-58861-C3-1, Aragon Government Research Group E103, Generalitat Valenciana projects Prometeo 2009/064 and PROMETEOII/2014/060, Junta de Andalucia grants TIC114, JA2828, P10-FQM-6444, and Generalitat de Catalunya project SGR-1398. A.J.C. and C.H.-M. are Ramon y Cajal fellows of the Spanish government. A. M. acknowledges the financial support of the Brazilian funding agency FAPESP (Post-doc fellowship - process number 2014/11806-9). M.P. acknowledges financial support from JAE-Doc program of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), co-funded by the European Social Fund.Peer Reviewe

The ALHAMBRA survey: reliable morphological catalogue of 22 051 early- and late-type galaxies

Advanced Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical (ALHAMBRA) is photometric survey designed to trace the cosmic evolution and cosmic variance. It covers a large area of ~4 deg2 in eight fields, where seven fields overlap with other surveys, allowing us to have complementary data in other wavelengths. All observations were carried out in 20 continuous, medium band (30 nm width) optical and 3 near-infrared (JHK) bands, providing the precise measurements of photometric redshifts. In addition, morphological classification of galaxies is crucial for any kind of galaxy formation and cosmic evolution studies, providing the information about star formation histories, their environment and interactions, internal perturbations, etc. We present a morphological classification of >40 000 galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey. We associate to every galaxy a probability to be early type using the automated Bayesian code GALSVM. Despite of the spatial resolution of theALHAMBRAimages (~1 arcsec), for 22 051 galaxies, we obtained the contamination by other type of less than 10 per cent. Of those, 1640 and 10 322 galaxies are classified as early-(down to redshifts ~0.5) and late-type (down to redshifts ~1.0), respectively, with magnitudes F613W ≤ 22.0. In addition, for magnitude range 22.0 < F613W ≤ 23.0, we classified other 10 089 late-type galaxies with redshifts ≤1.3.We show that the classified objects populate the expected regions in the colour-mass and colour-magnitude planes. The presented data set is especially attractive given the homogeneous multiwavelength coverage available in the ALHAMBRA fields, and is intended to be used in a variety of scientific applications. The low-contamination catalogue (<10 per cent) is made publicly available with this paper. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.This research was supported by the Junta de Andalucía through projects PO8-TIC-03531 and TIC114, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) through projects AYA2006-14046, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2011-29517-C03-01, and the Generalitat Valenciana through project GV/Prometeo 2009/064. MP acknowledges financial support from JAE-Doc program of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), co-funded by the European Social Fund.Peer Reviewe

Calibration, characterization and analysis of the ALHAMBRA photometric system

Tesis Univ. Granada. Departamento de Física Teórica y del Cosmos. Leída el 27 de enero de 201

The ALHAMBRA survey⋆: B-band luminosity function of quiescent and star-forming galaxies at 0.2 ≤ z < 1 by PDF analysis

Lopez-Sanjuan, C. et. al.Aims. Our goal is to study the evolution of the B-band luminosity function (LF) since z ∼ 1 using ALHAMBRA data. Methods. We used the photometric redshift and the I-band selection magnitude probability distribution functions (PDFs) of those ALHAMBRA galaxies with I ≤ 24 mag to compute the posterior LF. We statistically studied quiescent and star-forming galaxies using the template information encoded in the PDFs. The LF covariance matrix in redshift - magnitude - galaxy type space was computed, including the cosmic variance. That was estimated from the intrinsic dispersion of the LF measurements in the 48 ALHAMBRA sub-fields. The uncertainty due to the photometric redshift prior is also included in our analysis. Results. We modelled the LF with a redshift-dependent Schechter function affected by the same selection effects than the data. The measured ALHAMBRA LF at 0.2 ≤ z < 1 and the evolving Schechter parameters both for quiescent and star-forming galaxies agree with previous results in the literature. The estimated redshift evolution of M∗B ∝ Qz is QSF = -1.03±0.08 and QQ = -0.80±0.08, and of log10φ∗ ∝ Pz is PSF = -0.01±0.03 and PQ = -0.41 ± 0.05. The measured faint-end slopes are αSF = -1.29 ± 0.02 and αQ = -0.53 ± 0.04. We find a significant population of faint quiescent galaxies with MB ≳ -18, modelled by a second Schechter function with slope β = -1.31 ± 0.11. Conclusions. We present a robust methodology to compute LFs using multi-filter photometric data. The application to ALHAMBRA shows a factor 2.55 ± 0.14 decrease in the luminosity density jB of star-forming galaxies, and a factor 1.25 ± 0.16 increase in the jB of quiescent ones since z = 1, confirming the continuous build-up of the quiescent population with cosmic time. The contribution of the faint quiescent population to jB increases from 3% at z = 1 to 6% at z = 0. The developed methodology will be applied to future multi-filter surveys such as J-PAS. © 2017 ESO.This work has been mainly funded by the FITE (Fondos de Inversiones de Teruel) and the projects AYA2015-66211-C2-1, AYA2012-30789, AYA200614056, and CSD2007-00060. We also acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER funds through grants AYA2010-15081, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-01, AYA201022111- C03-02, AYA2011-29517-C03-01, AYA2012-39620, AYA2013-40611P, AYA2013-42227-P, AYA2013-43188-P, AYA2013-48623-C2-1, AYA201348623- C2-2, ESP2013-48274, AYA2014-58861-C3-1, Aragon Government Research Group E103, Generalitat Valenciana projects Prometeo 2009/064 and PROMETEOII/2014/060, Junta de Andalucia grants TIC114, JA2828, P10FQM-6444, and Generalitat de Catalunya project SGR-1398. E. T. acknowledges the support by the ETAg grants IUT26-2, IUT40-2, and by the European Regional Development Fund (TK133). A. M. acknowledges the financial support of the Brazilian funding agency FAPESP (Post-doc fellowship - process number 2014/11806-9). B. A. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 656354.Peer reviewe

Stellar physics with the ALHAMBRA photometric system

GREAT-ESF Workshop: Stellar Atmospheres in the Gaia Era 23–24 June 2011, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium.The ALHAMBRA photometric system was specifically designed to perform a tomography of the Universe in some selected areas. Although mainly designed for extragalactic purposes, its 20 contiguous, equal-width, medium-band photometric system in the optical wavelength range, shows a great capacity for stellar classification. In this contribution we propose a methodology for stellar classification and physical parameter estimation (Teff, log g, [Fe/H], and color excess E(B - V)) based on 18 independent reddening-free Q-values from the ALHAMBRA photometry. Based on the theoretical Spectral library BaSeL 2.2, and applied to 288 stars from the Next Generation spectral Library (NGSL), we discuss the reliability of the method and its dependence on the extinction law used.Peer reviewe