Morphological Evolution of Distant Galaxies from Adaptive Optics Imaging

We report here on a sample of resolved, infrared images of galaxies at z~0.5 taken with the 10-m Keck Telescope's Adaptive Optics (AO) system. We regularly achieve a spatial resolution of 0.05'' and are thus able to resolve both the disk and bulge components. We have extracted morphological information for ten galaxies and compared their properties to those of a local sample. The selection effects of both samples were explicitly taken into account in order to derive the unbiased result that disks at z~0.5 are ~0.6 mag arcsec^-2 brighter than, and about the same size as, local disks. The no-luminosity-evolution case is ruled out at 90% confidence. We also find, in a more qualitative analysis, that the bulges of these galaxies have undergone a smaller amount of surface brightness evolution and have also not changed significantly in size from z~0.5 to today. This is the first time this type of morphological evolution has been measured in the infrared and it points to the unique power of AO in exploring galaxy evolution.Comment: 27 pages, 7figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Young Red Spheroidal Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Fields: Evidence for a Truncated IMF at ~2M_solar and a Constant Space Density to z~2

The optical-IR images of the Northern and Southern Hubble Deep Fields are used to measure the spectral and density evolution of early-type galaxies. The mean optical SED is found to evolve passively towards a mid F-star dominated spectrum by z ~ 2. We demonstrate with realistic simulations that hotter ellipticals would be readily visible if evolution progressed blueward and brightward at z > 2, following a standard IMF. The colour distributions are best fitted by a `red' IMF, deficient above ~2 M_solar and with a spread of formation in the range 1.5 < z_f < 2.5. Traditional age dating is spurious in this context, a distant elliptical can be young but appear red, with an apparent age >3 Gyrs independent of its formation redshift. Regarding density evolution, we demonstrate that the sharp decline in numbers claimed at z > 1 results from a selection bias against distant red galaxies in the optical, where the flux is too weak for morphological classification, but is remedied with relatively modest IR exposures revealing a roughly constant space density to z ~ 2. We point out that the lack of high mass star-formation inferred here and the requirement of metals implicates cooling-flows of pre-enriched gas in the creation of the stellar content of spheroidal galaxies. Deep-field X-ray images will be very helpful to examine this possibility.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters, typographical errors corrected, simulated images with different IMFs illustrated at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~bouwens/ellip.htm

Encoding the infrared excess (IRX) in the NUVrK color diagram for star-forming galaxies

We present an empirical method of assessing the star formation rate (SFR) of star-forming galaxies based on their locations in the rest-frame color-color diagram (NUV-r) vs (r-K). By using the Spitzer 24 micron sample in the COSMOS field (~16400 galaxies with 0.2 < z < 1.3) and a local GALEX-SDSS-SWIRE sample (~700 galaxies with z = < L_IR / L_UV > can be described by a single vector, NRK, that combines the two colors. The calibration between and NRK allows us to recover the IR luminosity, L_IR, with an accuracy of ~0.21 dex for the COSMOS sample and ~0.27 dex for the local one. The SFRs derived with this method agree with the ones based on the observed (UV+IR) luminosities and on the spectral energy distribution fitting for the vast majority (~85 %) of the star-forming population. Thanks to a library of model galaxy SEDs with realistic prescriptions for the star formation history, we show that we need to include a two-component dust model (i.e., birth clouds and diffuse ISM) and a full distribution of galaxy inclinations in order to reproduce the behavior of the stripes in the NUVrK diagram. In conclusion, the NRK method, based only on rest-frame UV and optical colors available in most of the extragalactic fields, offers a simple alternative of assessing the SFR of star-forming galaxies in the absence of far-IR or spectral diagnostic observations.Comment: 21 pages, 22 figures, in publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

HeII emitters in the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey: PopIII star formation or peculiar stellar populations in galaxies at 2<z<4.6?

The aim of this work is to identify HeII emitters at 2<z<4.6 and to constrain the source of the hard ionizing continuum that powers the HeII emission. We have assembled a sample of 277 galaxies with a high quality spectroscopic redshift at 2<z<4.6 from the VVDS survey, and we have identified 39 HeII1640A emitters. We study their spectral properties, measuring the fluxes, equivalent widths (EW) and FWHM for most relevant lines. About 10% of galaxies at z~3 show HeII in emission, with rest frame equivalent widths EW0~1-7A, equally distributed between galaxies with Lya in emission or in absorption. We find 11 high-quality HeII emitters with unresolved HeII line (FWHM_0<1200km/s), 13 high-quality emitters with broad He II emission (FWHM_0>1200km/s), 3 AGN, and an additional 12 possible HeII emitters. The properties of the individual broad emitters are in agreement with expectations from a W-R model. On the contrary, the properties of the narrow emitters are not compatible with such model, neither with predictions of gravitational cooling radiation produced by gas accretion. Rather, we find that the EW of the narrow HeII line emitters are in agreement with expectations for a PopIII star formation, if the episode of star formation is continuous, and we calculate that a PopIII SFR of 0.1-10 Mo yr-1 only is enough to sustain the observed HeII flux. We conclude that narrow HeII emitters are either powered by the ionizing flux from a stellar population rare at z~0 but much more common at z~3, or by PopIII star formation. As proposed by Tornatore et al. (2007), incomplete ISM mixing may leave some small pockets of pristine gas at the periphery of galaxies from which PopIII may form, even down to z~2 or lower. If this interpretation is correct, we measure at z~3 a SFRD in PopIII stars of 10^6Mo yr^-1 Mpc^-3 qualitatively comparable to the value predicted by Tornatore et al. (2007).Comment: accepted for publication in A&

The relative abundances of ellipticals and starbursts among the Extremely Red Galaxies

We present J band observations of a complete sample of 57 red galaxies selected to have K5.3. We use the Pozzetti and Mannucci (2000) prescriptions, based on the R-K and J-K colours, to separate the two dominant populations, old ellipticals and dusty starbursts. We find that both populations are present in the current sample and have similar abundances, and discuss the uncertainties in this result. Galactic stars comprise about 9% of the objects. The starburst galaxies of the present sample are found to give a contribution to the cosmic star formation density similar to the Lyman-break galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, MNRAS, in pres

Cloning Hubble Deep Fields I: A Model-Independent Measurement of Galaxy Evolution

We present a model-independent method of quantifying galaxy evolution in high-resolution images, which we apply to the Hubble Deep Field (HDF). Our procedure is to k-correct all pixels belonging to the images of a complete set of bright galaxies and then to replicate each galaxy image to higher redshift by the product of its space density, 1/V_{max}, and the cosmological volume. The set of bright galaxies is itself selected from the HDF, because presently the HDF provides the highest quality UV images of a redshift-complete sample of galaxies (31 galaxies with I<21.9, \bar{z}=0.5, and for which V/V_{max} is spread fairly). These galaxies are bright enough to permit accurate pixel-by-pixel k-corrections into the restframe UV (\sim 2000 A). We match the shot noise, spatial sampling and PSF smoothing of the HDF data, resulting in entirely empirical and parameter-free ``no-evolution'' deep fields of galaxies for direct comparison with the HDF. In addition, the overcounting rate and the level of incompleteness can be accurately quantified by this procedure. We obtain the following results. Faint HDF galaxies (I>24) are much smaller, more numerous, and less regular than our ``no-evolution'' extrapolation, for any interesting geometry. A higher proportion of HDF galaxies ``dropout'' in both U and B, indicating that some galaxies were brighter at higher redshifts than our ``cloned'' z\sim0.5 population.Comment: 51 pages, 23 figures, replacement includes figures not previously include

The evolution of the galaxy luminosity function in the rest frame blue band up to z=3.5

We present an estimate of the cosmological evolution of the field galaxy luminosity function (LF) in the rest frame 4400 Angstrom B -band up to redshift z=3.5. To this purpose, we use a composite sample of 1541 I--selected galaxies selected down to I_(AB)=27.2 and 138 galaxies selected down to K_(AB)=25 from ground-based and HST multicolor surveys, most notably the new deep JHK images in the Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S) taken with the ISAAC instrument at the ESO-VLT telescope. About 21% of the sample has spectroscopic redshifts, and the remaining fraction well calibrated photometric redshifts. The resulting blue LF shows little density evolution at the faint end with respect to the local values, while at the bright end (M_B(AB)<-20) a brightening increasing with redshift is apparent with respect to the local LF. Hierarchical CDM models overpredict the number of faint galaxies by about a factor 3 at z=1. At the bright end the predicted LFs are in reasonable agreement only at low and intermediate redshifts (z=1), but fail to reproduce the pronounced brightening observed in the high redshift (z=2-3) LF. This brightening could mark the epoch where a major star formation activity is present in the galaxy evolution.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

A Look At Three Different Scenarios for Bulge Formation

In this paper, we present three qualitatively different scenarios for bulge formation: a secular evolution model in which bulges form after disks and undergo several central starbursts, a primordial collapse model in which bulges and disks form simultaneously, and an early bulge formation model in which bulges form prior to disks. We normalize our models to the local z=0 observations of de Jong & van der Kruit (1994) and Peletier & Balcells (1996) and make comparisons with high redshift observations. We consider model predictions relating directly to bulge-to-disk properties. As expected, smaller bulge-to-disk ratios and bluer bulge colors are predicted by the secular evolution model at all redshifts, although uncertainties in the data are currently too large to differentiate strongly between the models.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

J- and Ks-band Galaxy Counts and Color Distributions in the AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Field

We present the J- and Ks-band galaxy counts and galaxy colors covering 750 square arcminutes in the deep AKARI North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) field, using the FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-ir Grism Observational Spectrometer (FLAMINGOS) on the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) 2.1m telescope. The limiting magnitudes with a signal-to-noise ratio of three in the deepest regions are 21.85 and 20.15 in the J- and Ks-bands respectively in the Vega magnitude system. The J- and Ks-band galaxy counts in the AKARI NEP field are broadly in good agreement with those of other results in the literature, however we find some indication of a change in the galaxy number count slope at J~19.5 and over the magnitude range 18.0 < Ks < 19.5. We interpret this feature as a change in the dominant population at these magnitudes because we also find an associated change in the B - Ks color distribution at these magnitudes where the number of blue samples in the magnitude range 18.5 < Ks < 19.5 is significantly larger than that of Ks < 17.5

The effective Lagrangian of dark energy from observations

Using observational data on the expansion rate of the universe (H(z)) we constrain the effective Lagrangian of the current accelerated expansion. Our results show that the effective potential is consistent with being flat i.e., a cosmological constant; it is also consistent with the field moving along an almost flat potential like a pseudo-Goldstone boson. We show that the potential of dark energy does not deviate from a constant at more than 6% over the redshift range 0 < z < 1. The data can be described by just a constant term in the Lagrangian and do not require any extra parameters; therefore there is no evidence for augmenting the number of parameters of the LCDM paradigm. We also find that the data justify the effective theory approach to describe accelerated expansion and that the allowed parameters range satisfy the expected hierarchy. Future data, both from cosmic chronometers and baryonic acoustic oscillations, that can measure H(z) at the % level, could greatly improve constraints on the flatness of the potential or shed some light on possible mechanisms driving the accelerated expansion. Besides the above result, it is shown that the effective Lagrangian of accelerated expansion can be constrained from cosmological observations in a model-independent way and that direct measurements of the expansion rate H(z) are most useful to do so.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, JCAP submitted. This paper presents a reconstruction of the dark energy potential. It is a companion to Moresco et al. 2012a, which presents new H(z) results and Moresco et al. 2012b, which provides cosmological parameter constraint