425 research outputs found
The Discovery of 1000 km/s Outflows in Massive Post-starburst Galaxies at z=0.6
Numerical simulations suggest that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) play an
important role in the formation of early-type galaxies by expelling gas and
dust in powerful galactic winds and quenching star formation. However, the
existence of AGN feedback capable of halting galaxy-wide star formation has yet
to be observationally confirmed. To investigate this question, we have obtained
spectra of 14 post-starburst galaxies at z~0.6 to search for evidence of
galactic winds. In 10/14 galaxies we detect Mg II 2796,2803 absorption lines
which are blueshifted by 490 - 2020 km/s with respect to the stars. The median
blueshift is 1140 km/s. We hypothesize that the outflowing gas represents a
fossil galactic wind launched near the peak of the galaxy's activity, a few 100
Myr ago. The velocities we measure are intermediate between those of luminous
starbursts and broad absorption line quasars, which suggests that feedback from
an AGN may have played a role in expelling cool gas and shutting down star
formation.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted to ApJ Letter
Optical Spectroscopy and Nebular Oxygen Abundances of the Spitzer/SINGS Galaxies
We present intermediate-resolution optical spectrophotometry of 65 galaxies
obtained in support of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS). For
each galaxy we obtain a nuclear, circumnuclear, and semi-integrated optical
spectrum designed to coincide spatially with mid- and far-infrared spectroscopy
from the Spitzer Space Telescope. We make the reduced, spectrophotometrically
calibrated one-dimensional spectra, as well as measurements of the fluxes and
equivalent widths of the strong nebular emission lines, publically available.
We use optical emission-line ratios measured on all three spatial scales to
classify the sample into star-forming, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and
galaxies with a mixture of star formation and nuclear activity. We find that
the relative fraction of the sample classified as star-forming versus AGN is a
strong function of the integrated light enclosed by the spectroscopic aperture.
We supplement our observations with a large database of nebular emission-line
measurements of individual HII regions in the SINGS galaxies culled from the
literature. We use these ancillary data to conduct a detailed analysis of the
radial abundance gradients and average HII-region abundances of a large
fraction of the sample. We combine these results with our new integrated
spectra to estimate the central and characteristic (globally-averaged)
gas-phase oxygen abundances of all 75 SINGS galaxies. We conclude with an
in-depth discussion of the absolute uncertainty in the nebular oxygen abundance
scale.Comment: ApJS, in press; 52 emulateapj pages, 12 figures, and two appendices;
v2: final abundances revised due to minor error; conclusions unchange
A New Star-Formation Rate Calibration from Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Emission Features and Application to High Redshift Galaxies
We calibrate the integrated luminosity from the polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbon (PAH) features at 6.2\micron, 7.7\micron\ and 11.3\micron\ in
galaxies as a measure of the star-formation rate (SFR). These features are
strong (containing as much as 5-10\% of the total infrared luminosity) and
suffer minimal extinction. Our calibration uses \spitzer\ Infrared Spectrograph
(IRS) measurements of 105 galaxies at , infrared (IR) luminosities
of 10^9 - 10^{12} \lsol, combined with other well-calibrated SFR indicators.
The PAH luminosity correlates linearly with the SFR as measured by the
extinction-corrected \ha\ luminosity over the range of luminosities in our
calibration sample. The scatter is 0.14 dex comparable to that between SFRs
derived from the \paa\ and extinction-corrected \ha\ emission lines, implying
the PAH features may be as accurate a SFR indicator as hydrogen recombination
lines. The PAH SFR relation depends on gas-phase metallicity, for which we
supply an empirical correction for galaxies with 0.2 < \mathrm{Z} \lsim
0.7~\zsol. We present a case study in advance of the \textit{James Webb Space
Telescope} (\jwst), which will be capable of measuring SFRs from PAHs in
distant galaxies at the peak of the SFR density in the universe () with
SFRs as low as ~10~\sfrunits. We use \spitzer/IRS observations of the PAH
features and \paa\ emission plus \ha\ measurements in lensed star-forming
galaxies at to demonstrate the ability of the PAHs to derive
accurate SFRs. We also demonstrate that because the PAH features dominate the
mid-IR fluxes, broad-band mid-IR photometric measurements from \jwst\ will
trace both the SFR and provide a way to exclude galaxies dominated by an AGN.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
Calibrating the Star Formation Rate at z=1 from Optical Data
We present a star-formation rate calibration based on optical data that is
consistent with average observed rates in both the red and blue galaxy
populations at z~1. The motivation for this study is to calculate SFRs for
DEEP2 Redshift Survey galaxies in the 0.7<z<1.4 redshift range, but our results
are generally applicable to similar optically-selected galaxy samples without
requiring UV or IR data. Using SFRs fit from UV/optical SEDs in the AEGIS
survey, we explore the behavior of restframe B-band magnitude, observed [OII]
luminosity, and restframe (U-B) color with SED-fit SFR for both red sequence
and blue cloud galaxies. We find that a SFR calibration can be calculated for
all z~1 DEEP2 galaxies using a simultaneous fit in M_B and restframe colors
with residual errors that are within the SFR measurement error. The resulting
SFR calibration produces fit residual errors of 0.3 dex RMS scatter for the
full color-independent sample with minimal correlated residual error in L[OII]
or stellar mass. We then compare the calibrated z~1 SFRs to two diagnostics
that use L[OII] as a tracer in local galaxies and correct for dust extinction
at intermediate redshifts through either galaxy B-band luminosity or stellar
mass. We find that a L[OII] - M_B SFR calibration commonly used in the
literature agrees well with our calculated SFRs after correcting for the
average B-band luminosity evolution in L* galaxies. However, we find better
agreement with a local L[OII]-based SFR calibration that includes stellar mass
to correct for reddening effects, indicating that stellar mass is a better
tracer of dust extinction for all galaxy types and less affected by systematic
evolution than galaxy luminosity from z=1 to the current epoch.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, emulateapj format, to be submitted to Ap
The [O II] lambda 3727 Luminosity Function at z ~ 1
We measure the evolution of the [OII]lambda 3727 luminosity function at
0.75<z<1.45 using high-resolution spectroscopy of ~14,000 galaxies observed by
the DEEP2 galaxy redshift survey. We find that brighter than L_{OII}=10^{42}
erg s^(-1) the luminosity function is well-represented by a power law dN/dL ~
L^{\alpha} with slope \alpha ~ -3. The number density of [OII] emitting
galaxies above this luminosity declines by a factor of >~2.5 between z ~ 1.35
and z ~ 0.84. In the limit of no number-density evolution, the characteristic
[OII] luminosity, L^*_[OII], defined as the luminosity where the space density
equals 10^{-3.5} dex^{-1} Mpc^{-3}, declines by a factor of ~1.8 over the same
redshift interval. Assuming that L_[OII] is proportional to the star-formation
rate (SFR), and negligible change in the typical dust attenuation in galaxies
at fixed [OII] luminosity, the measured decline in L^*_[OII] implies a ~25% per
Gyr decrease in the amount of star formation in galaxies during this epoch.
Adopting a faint-end power-law slope of -1.3\pm0.2, we derive the comoving SFR
density in four redshift bins centered around z~1 by integrating the observed
[OII] luminosity function using a local, empirical calibration between L_[OII]
and SFR, which statistically accounts for variations in dust attenuation and
metallicity among galaxies. We find that our estimate of the SFR density at z~1
is consistent with previous measurements based on a variety of independent SFR
indicators.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, resubmitted to ApJ, in emulateapj
style. Comparison with narrow-band observations added. Wavelength coverage
included into complete function, little effects. The data is available on
http://bias.cosmo.fas.nyu.edu/galevolution
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