No Arabic abstract
We present the first results of the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (KLASS), a new ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) large program, doing multi-object integral field spectroscopy of galaxies gravitationally lensed behind seven galaxy clusters selected from the HST Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS). Using the power of the cluster magnification we are able to reveal the kinematic structure of 25 galaxies at $0.7 lesssim z lesssim 2.3$, in four cluster fields, with stellar masses $8 lesssim log{(M_star/M_odot)} lesssim 11$. This sample includes 5 sources at $z>1$ with lower stellar masses than in any previous kinematic IFU surveys. Our sample displays a diversity in kinematic structure over this mass and redshift range. The majority of our kinematically resolved sample is rotationally supported, but with a lower ratio of rotational velocity to velocity dispersion than in the local universe, indicating the fraction of dynamically hot disks changes with cosmic time. We find no galaxies with stellar mass $<3 times 10^9 M_odot$ in our sample display regular ordered rotation. Using the enhanced spatial resolution from lensing, we resolve a lower number of dispersion dominated systems compared to field surveys, competitive with findings from surveys using adaptive optics. We find that the KMOS IFUs recover emission line flux from HST grism-selected objects more faithfully than slit spectrographs. With artificial slits we estimate slit spectrographs miss on average 60% of the total flux of emission lines, which decreases rapidly if the emission line is spatially offset from the continuum.
We present results from the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (KLASS), an ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) large program using gravitational lensing to study the spatially resolved kinematics of 44 star-forming galaxies at 0.6<z<2.3 with a stellar mass of 8.1<log(M$_star$/M$_{odot}$)<11.0. These galaxies are located behind six galaxy clusters selected from the HST Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS). We find that the majority of the galaxies show a rotating disk, but most of the rotation-dominated galaxies only have a low $upsilon_{rot}/sigma_0$ ratio (median of $upsilon_{rot}/sigma_0sim2.5$). We explore the Tully-Fisher relation by adopting the circular velocity, $V_{circ}=(upsilon_{rot}^2+3.4sigma_0^2)^{1/2}$, to account for pressure support. We find that our sample follows a Tully-Fisher relation with a positive zero-point offset of +0.18 dex compared to the local relation, consistent with more gas-rich galaxies that still have to convert most of their gas into stars. We find a strong correlation between the velocity dispersion and stellar mass in the KLASS sample. When combining our data to other surveys from the literature, we also see an increase of the velocity dispersion with stellar mass at all redshift. We obtain an increase of $upsilon_{rot}/sigma_0$ with stellar mass at 0.5<z<1.0. This could indicate that massive galaxies settle into regular rotating disks before the low-mass galaxies. For higher redshift (z>1), we find a weak increase or flat trend. We investigate the relation between the rest-frame UV clumpiness of galaxies and their global kinematic properties. We find no clear trend between the clumpiness and the velocity dispersion and $upsilon_{rot}/sigma_0$. This could suggest that the kinematic properties of galaxies evolve after the clumps formed in the galaxy disk or that the clumps can form in different physical conditions.
Detections and non-detections of Lyman alpha (Ly$alpha$) emission from $z>6$ galaxies ($<1$ Gyr after the Big Bang) can be used to measure the timeline of cosmic reionization. Of key interest to measuring reionizations mid-stages, but also increasing observational challenge, are observations at z > 7, where Ly$alpha$ redshifts to near infra-red wavelengths. Here we present a search for z > 7.2 Ly$alpha$ emission in 53 intrinsically faint Lyman Break Galaxy candidates, gravitationally lensed by massive galaxy clusters, in the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (KLASS). With integration times of ~7-10 hours, we detect no Ly$alpha$ emission with S/N>5 in our sample. We determine our observations to be 80% complete for 5$sigma$ spatially and spectrally unresolved emission lines with integrated line flux $>5.7times10^{-18}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$. We define a photometrically selected sub-sample of 29 targets at $z=7.9pm0.6$, with a median 5$sigma$ Ly$alpha$ EW limit of 58A. We perform a Bayesian inference of the average intergalactic medium (IGM) neutral hydrogen fraction using their spectra. Our inference accounts for the wavelength sensitivity and incomplete redshift coverage of our observations, and the photometric redshift probability distribution of each target. These observations, combined with samples from the literature, enable us to place a lower limit on the average IGM neutral hydrogen fraction of $> 0.76 ; (68%), ; > 0.46 ; (95%)$ at z ~ 8, providing further evidence of rapid reionization at z~6-8. We show that this is consistent with reionization history models extending the galaxy luminosity function to $M_textrm{UV} lesssim -12$, with low ionizing photon escape fractions, $f_textrm{esc} lesssim 15%$.
The MAMMOTH-Grism slitless spectroscopic survey is a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) cycle-28 medium program, which is obtaining 45 orbits of WFC3/IR grism spectroscopy in the density peak regions of three massive galaxy protoclusters at $z=2-3$ discovered using the MAMMOTH technique. We introduce this survey by presenting the first measurement of mass-metallicity relation (MZR) at high redshift in overdense environments via grism spectroscopy. From the completed MAMMOTH-Grism observation in the field of the BOSS1244 protocluster at $z=2.24pm0.02$, We secure a sample of 36 protocluster member galaxies at $zsim2.24$, showing strong nebular emission lines ([O III], H$beta$ and [O II]) in their G141 spectra. Using the multi-wavelength broad-band deep imaging from HST and ground-based telescopes, we measure their stellar masses in the range of $[10^{9},10^{10.4}]M_odot$, instantaneous star formation rates (SFR) from 10 to 240$M_odot yr^{-1}$, and global gas-phase metallicities [1/3,1] of solar. Compared with similarly selected field galaxy sample at the same redshift, our galaxies show on average increased SFRs by ~0.06dex and ~0.18dex at ~10$^{10.1}M_odot$ and ~10$^{9.8}M_odot$, respectively. Using the stacked spectra of our sample galaxies, we derive the MZR in the BOSS1244 protocluster core as $12+log({rm O/H})=(0.136pm0.018)timeslog(M_ast/M_odot)+(7.082pm0.175)$, showing significantly shallower slope than that in the field. This shallow MZR slope is likely caused by the combined effects of efficient recycling of feedback-driven winds and cold-mode gas accretion in protocluster environments. The former effect helps low-mass galaxies residing in overdensities retain their metal production, whereas the latter effect dilutes the metal content of high-mass galaxies, making them more metal poor than their coeval field counterparts.
We present the KMOS^3D survey, a new integral field survey of over 600 galaxies at 0.7<z<2.7 using KMOS at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The KMOS^3D survey utilizes synergies with multi-wavelength ground and space-based surveys to trace the evolution of spatially-resolved kinematics and star formation from a homogeneous sample over 5 Gyrs of cosmic history. Targets, drawn from a mass-selected parent sample from the 3D-HST survey, cover the star formation-stellar mass ($M_*$) and rest-frame $(U-V)-M_*$ planes uniformly. We describe the selection of targets, the observations, and the data reduction. In the first year of data we detect Halpha emission in 191 $M_*=3times10^{9}-7times10^{11}$ Msun galaxies at z=0.7-1.1 and z=1.9-2.7. In the current sample 83% of the resolved galaxies are rotation-dominated, determined from a continuous velocity gradient and $v_{rot}/sigma>1$, implying that the star-forming main sequence (MS) is primarily composed of rotating galaxies at both redshift regimes. When considering additional stricter criteria, the Halpha kinematic maps indicate at least ~70% of the resolved galaxies are disk-like systems. Our high-quality KMOS data confirm the elevated velocity dispersions reported in previous IFS studies at z>0.7. For rotation-dominated disks, the average intrinsic velocity dispersion decreases by a factor of two from 50 km/s at z~2.3 to 25 km/s at z~0.9 while the rotational velocities at the two redshifts are comparable. Combined with existing results spanning z~0-3, disk velocity dispersions follow an approximate (1+z) evolution that is consistent with the dependence of velocity dispersion on gas fractions predicted by marginally-stable disk theory.
We investigate the stellar populations of 25 massive, galaxies ($log[M_ast/M_odot] geq 10.9$) at $1.5 < z < 2$ using data obtained with the K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) on the ESO VLT. Targets were selected to be quiescent based on their broadband colors and redshifts using data from the 3D-HST grism survey. The mean redshift of our sample is $bar{z} = 1.75$, where KMOS YJ-band data probe age- and metallicity-sensitive absorption features in the rest-frame optical, including the $G$ band, Fe I, and high-order Balmer lines. Fitting simple stellar population models to a stack of our KMOS spectra, we derive a mean age of $1.03^{+0.13}_{-0.08}$ Gyr. We confirm previous results suggesting a correlation between color and age for quiescent galaxies, finding mean ages of $1.22^{+0.56}_{-0.19}$ Gyr and $0.85^{+0.08}_{-0.05}$ Gyr for the reddest and bluest galaxies in our sample. Combining our KMOS measurements with those obtained from previous studies at $0.2 < z < 2$ we find evidence for a $2-3$ Gyr spread in the formation epoch of massive galaxies. At $z < 1$ the measured stellar ages are consistent with passive evolution, while at $1 < z lesssim2$ they appear to saturate at $sim$1 Gyr, which likely reflects changing demographics of the (mean) progenitor population. By comparing to star-formation histories inferred for normal star-forming galaxies, we show that the timescales required to form massive galaxies at $z gtrsim 1.5$ are consistent with the enhanced $alpha$-element abundances found in massive local early-type galaxies.