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Register a new userA massive, quiescent, population II galaxy at a redshift of 2.1
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Unlike spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way, the majority of the stars in massive elliptical galaxies were formed in a short period early in the history of the Universe. The duration of this formation period can be measured using the ratio of magnesium to iron abundance ([Mg/Fe]), which reflects the relative enrichment by core-collapse and type Ia supernovae. For local galaxies, [Mg/Fe] probes the combined formation history of all stars currently in the galaxy, including younger and metal-poor stars that were added during late-time mergers. Therefore, to directly constrain the initial star-formation period, we must study galaxies at earlier epochs. The most distant galaxy for which [Mg/Fe] had previously been measured is at z~1.4, with [Mg/Fe]=0.45(+0.05,-0.19). A slightly earlier epoch (z~1.6) was probed by stacking the spectra of 24 massive quiescent galaxies, yielding an average [Mg/Fe] of 0.31+/-0.12. However, the relatively low S/N of the data and the use of index analysis techniques for both studies resulted in measurement errors that are too large to allow us to form strong conclusions. Deeper spectra at even earlier epochs in combination with analysis techniques based on full spectral fitting are required to precisely measure the abundance pattern shortly after the major star-forming phase (z>2). Here we report a measurement of [Mg/Fe] for a massive quiescent galaxy at z=2.1. With [Mg/Fe]=0.59+/-0.11, this galaxy is the most Mg-enhanced massive galaxy found so far, having twice the Mg enhancement of similar-mass galaxies today. The abundance pattern of the galaxy is consistent with enrichment exclusively by core-collapse supernovae and with a star-formation timescale of 0.1-0.5 Gyr - characteristics that are similar to population II stars in the Milky Way. With an average past SFR of 600-3000 Msol/yr, this galaxy was among the most vigorous star-forming galaxies in the Universe.
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In the early Universe finding massive galaxies that have stopped forming stars present an observational challenge as their rest-frame ultraviolet emission is negligible and they can only be reliably identified by extremely deep near-infrared surveys. These have revealed the presence of massive, quiescent early-type galaxies appearing in the universe as early as z$sim$2, an epoch 3 Gyr after the Big Bang. Their age and formation processes have now been explained by an improved generation of galaxy formation models where they form rapidly at z$sim$3-4, consistent with the typical masses and ages derived from their observations. Deeper surveys have now reported evidence for populations of massive, quiescent galaxies at even higher redshifts and earlier times, however the evidence for their existence, and redshift, has relied entirely on coarsely sampled photometry. These early massive, quiescent galaxies are not predicted by the latest generation of theoretical models. Here, we report the spectroscopic confirmation of one of these galaxies at redshift z=3.717 with a stellar mass of 1.7$times$10$^{11}$ M$_odot$ whose absorption line spectrum shows no current star-formation and which has a derived age of nearly half the age of the Universe at this redshift. The observations demonstrates that the galaxy must have quickly formed the majority of its stars within the first billion years of cosmic history in an extreme and short starburst. This ancestral event is similar to those starting to be found by sub-mm wavelength surveys pointing to a possible connection between these two populations. Early formation of such massive systems is likely to require significant revisions to our picture of early galaxy assembly.
We report the likely identification of a substantial population of massive M~10^11M_Sun galaxies at z~4 with suppressed star formation rates (SFRs), selected on rest-frame optical to near-IR colors from the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey. The observed spectral energy distributions show pronounced breaks, sampled by a set of near-IR medium-bandwidth filters, resulting in tightly constrained photometric redshifts. Fitting stellar population models suggests large Balmer/4000AA breaks, relatively old stellar populations, large stellar masses and low SFRs, with a median specific SFR of 2.9+/-1.8 x 10^-11/yr. Ultradeep Herschel/PACS 100micron, 160micron and Spitzer/MIPS 24micron data reveal no dust-obscured SFR activity for 15/19 (79%) galaxies. Two far-IR detected galaxies are obscured QSOs. Stacking the far-IR undetected galaxies yields no detection, consistent with the SED fit, indicating independently that the average specific SFR is at least 10x smaller than of typical star-forming galaxies at z~4. Assuming all far-IR undetected galaxies are indeed quiescent, the volume density is 1.8+/-0.7 x 10^-5Mpc^-3 to a limit of log10M/M_Sun>10.6, which is 10x and 80x lower than at z = 2 and z = 0.1. They comprise a remarkably high fraction (~35%) of z~4 massive galaxies, suggesting that suppression of star formation was efficient even at very high redshift. Given the average stellar age of 0.8Gyr and stellar mass of 0.8x10^11M_Sun, the galaxies likely started forming stars before z =5, with SFRs well in excess of 100M_Sun/yr, far exceeding that of similarly abundant UV-bright galaxies at z>4. This suggests that most of the star-formation in the progenitors of quiescent z~4 galaxies was obscured by dust.
In this paper we present a simple color-magnitude selection and obtain a large sample of 33,893 massive quiescent galaxies at intermediate redshifts (1<z<1.5). We choose the longest wavelength available in the Hyper-Supreme-Cam (HSC) deep survey, the Y band and i-Y color, to select the 4000A Balmer jump in passive galaxies to the highest redshift possible within the survey. With the rich multi-wavelength data in the HSC deep fields, we then confirm that the selected galaxies are in the targeted redshift range of 1<z<1.5, lie in the passive region of the UVJ diagram, and have high stellar masses at log(M*/M_sun)>10.5, with a median of log(M*/M_sun)=11.0. A small fraction of our galaxies is also covered by the HST CANDELS. Morphological analysis in the observed H band shows that the majority of this subsample are early-type galaxies. As massive early-type galaxies trace the high density regions in the large scale structure in the universe, our study provides a quick and simple way to obtain a statistical significant sample of massive galaxies in a relative narrow redshift range. Our sample is 7-20 times larger at the massive end (log(M*/M_sun)>10.5) than any existing samples obtained in previous surveys. This is a pioneer study, and the technique introduced here can be applied to future wide-field survey to study large scale structure, and to identify high density region and clusters.
We report a massive quiescent galaxy at $z_{rm spec}=3.0922^{+0.008}_{-0.004}$ spectroscopically confirmed at a protocluster in the SSA22 field by detecting the Balmer and Ca {footnotesize II} absorption features with multi-object spectrometer for infrared exploration (MOSFIRE) on the Keck I telescope. This is the most distant quiescent galaxy confirmed in a protocluster to date. We fit the optical to mid-infrared photometry and spectrum simultaneously with spectral energy distribution (SED) models of parametric and nonparametric star formation histories (SFH). Both models fit the observed SED well and confirm that this object is a massive quiescent galaxy with the stellar mass of $log(rm M_{star}/M_{odot}) = 11.26^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$ and $11.54^{+0.03}_{-0.00}$, and star formation rate of $rm SFR/M_{odot}~yr^{-1} <0.3$ and $=0.01^{+0.03}_{-0.01}$ for parametric and nonparametric models, respectively. The SFH from the former modeling is described as an instantaneous starburst while that of the latter modeling is longer-lived but both models agree with a sudden quenching of the star formation at $sim0.6$ Gyr ago. This massive quiescent galaxy is confirmed in an extremely dense group of galaxies predicted as a progenitor of a brightest cluster galaxy formed via multiple mergers in cosmological numerical simulations. We newly find three plausible [O III]$lambda$5007 emitters at $3.0791leq z_{rm spec}leq3.0833$ happened to be detected around the target. Two of them just between the target and its nearest massive galaxy are possible evidence of their interactions. They suggest the future strong size and stellar mass evolution of this massive quiescent galaxy via mergers.
Massive galaxy clusters are now found as early as 3 billion years after the Big Bang, containing stars that formed at even earlier epochs. The high-redshift progenitors of these galaxy clusters, termed protoclusters, are identified in cosmological simulations with the highest dark matter overdensities. While their observational signatures are less well defined compared to virialized clusters with a substantial hot intra-cluster medium (ICM), protoclusters are expected to contain extremely massive galaxies that can be observed as luminous starbursts. Recent claimed detections of protoclusters hosting such starbursts do not support the kind of rapid cluster core formation expected in simulations because these structures contain only a handful of starbursting galaxies spread throughout a broad structure, with poor evidence for eventual collapse into a protocluster. Here we report that the source SPT2349-56 consists of at least 14 gas-rich galaxies all lying at z = 4.31 based on sensitive observations of carbon monoxide and ionized carbon. We demonstrate that each of these galaxies is forming stars between 50 and 1000 times faster than our own Milky Way, and all are located within a projected region only $sim$ 130 kiloparsecs in diameter. This galaxy surface density is more than 10 times the average blank field value (integrated over all redshifts) and $>$1000 times the average field volume density. The velocity dispersion ($sim$ 410 km s$^{-1}$) of these galaxies and enormous gas and star formation densities suggest that this system represents a galaxy cluster core at an advanced stage of formation when the Universe was only 1.4 billion years old. A comparison with other known protoclusters at high redshifts shows that SPT2349-56 is a uniquely massive and dense system that could be building one of the most massive structures in the Universe today.
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