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Register a new userA Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at z=11.1 Measured with Hubble Space Telescope Grism Spectroscopy
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We present Hubble WFC3/IR slitless grism spectra of a remarkably bright $zgtrsim10$ galaxy candidate, GN-z11, identified initially from CANDELS/GOODS-N imaging data. A significant spectroscopic continuum break is detected at $lambda=1.47pm0.01~mu$m. The new grism data, combined with the photometric data, rule out all plausible lower redshift solutions for this source. The only viable solution is that this continuum break is the Ly$alpha$ break redshifted to ${z_mathrm{grism}=11.09^{+0.08}_{-0.12}}$, just $sim$400 Myr after the Big Bang. This observation extends the current spectroscopic frontier by 150 Myr to well before the Planck (instantaneous) cosmic reionization peak at z~8.8, demonstrating that galaxy build-up was well underway early in the reionization epoch at z>10. GN-z11 is remarkably and unexpectedly luminous for a galaxy at such an early time: its UV luminosity is 3x larger than L* measured at z~6-8. The Spitzer IRAC detections up to 4.5 $mu$m of this galaxy are consistent with a stellar mass of ${sim10^{9}~M_odot}$. This spectroscopic redshift measurement suggests that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to similarly and easily confirm such sources at z>10 and characterize their physical properties through detailed spectroscopy. Furthermore, WFIRST, with its wide-field near-IR imaging, would find large numbers of similar galaxies and contribute greatly to JWSTs spectroscopy, if it is launched early enough to overlap with JWST.
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Differentiating between active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity and star formation in z ~ 2 galaxies is difficult because traditional methods, such as line ratio diagnostics, change with redshift while multi-wavelength methods (X-ray, radio, IR) are sensitive to only the brightest AGN. We have developed a new method for spatially resolving emission lines in HST/WFC3 G141 grism spectra and quantifying AGN activity through the spatial gradient of the [O III]/H$beta$ line ratio. Through detailed simulations, we show that our novel line-ratio gradient approach identifies ~ sim 40% more low-mass and obscured AGN than obtained by classical methods. Based on our simulations, we developed a relationship that maps stellar mass, star formation rate, and measured [O III]/H$beta$ gradient to AGN Eddington ratio. We apply our technique to previously studied stacked samples of galaxies at z ~2 and find that our results are consistent with these studies. Using this gradient method will also be able to inform other galaxy evolution science, such as inside-out quenching and metallicity gradients, and will be widely applicable to future spatially resolved JWST data.
We used the Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 near-infrared camera to image the host galaxies of a sample of eleven luminous, dust-reddened quasars at z ~ 2 -- the peak epoch of black hole growth and star formation in the Universe -- to test the merger-driven picture for the co-evolution of galaxies and their nuclear black holes. The red quasars come from the FIRST+2MASS red quasar survey and a newer, deeper, UKIDSS+FIRST sample. These dust-reddened quasars are the most intrinsically luminous quasars in the Universe at all redshifts, and may represent the dust-clearing transitional phase in the merger-driven black hole growth scenario. Probing the host galaxies in rest-frame visible light, the HST images reveal that 8/10 of these quasars have actively merging hosts, while one source is reddened by an intervening lower redshift galaxy along the line-of-sight. We study the morphological properties of the quasar hosts using parametric Sersic fits as well as the non-parametric estimators (Gini coefficient, M_{20} and asymmetry). Their properties are heterogeneous but broadly consistent with the most extreme morphologies of local merging systems such as Ultraluminous Infrared galaxies. The red quasars have a luminosity range of log(L_bol) = 47.8 - 48.3 (erg/s) and the merger fraction of their AGN hosts is consistent with merger-driven models of luminous AGN activity at z=2, which supports the picture in which luminous quasars and galaxies co-evolve through major mergers that trigger both star formation and black hole growth.
We use deep textit{Hubble Space Telescope} spectroscopy to constrain the metallicities and (editone{light-weighted}) ages of massive ($log M_ast/M_odotgtrsim10$) galaxies selected to have quiescent stellar populations at $1.0<z<1.8$. The data include 12--orbit depth coverage with the WFC3/G102 grism covering $sim$ $8,000<lambda<11,500$~AA, at a spectral resolution of $Rsim 210$ taken as part of the CANDELS Lyman-$alpha$ Emission at Reionization (CLEAR) survey. At $1.0<z<1.8$, the spectra cover important stellar population features in the rest-frame optical. We simulate a suite of stellar population models at the grism resolution, fit these to the data for each galaxy, and derive posterior likelihood distributions for metallicity and age. We stack the posteriors for subgroups of galaxies in different redshift ranges that include different combinations of stellar absorption features. Our results give editone{light-weighted ages of $t_{z sim 1.1}= 3.2pm 0.7$~Gyr, $t_{z sim 1.2}= 2.2pm 0.6$~Gyr, $t_{zsim1.3}= 3.1pm 0.6$~Gyr, and $t_{zsim1.6}= 2.0 pm 0.6$~Gyr, editone{for galaxies at $zsim 1.1$, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.6. This} implies that most of the massive quiescent galaxies at $1<z<1.8$ had formed $>68$% of their stellar mass by a redshift of $z>2$}. The posteriors give metallicities of editone{$Z_{zsim1.1}=1.16 pm 0.29$~$Z_odot$, $Z_{zsim1.2}=1.05 pm 0.34$~$Z_odot$, $Z_{zsim1.3}=1.00 pm 0.31$~$Z_odot$, and $Z_{zsim1.6}=0.95 pm 0.39$~$Z_odot$}. This is evidence that massive galaxies had enriched rapidly to approximately Solar metallicities as early as $zsim3$.
We present the results of an unbiased search for Ly{alpha} emission from continuum-selected 6 < z < 8 galaxies. Our dataset consists of 160 orbits of G102 slitless grism spectroscopy obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 as part of the Faint Infrared Grism Survey (FIGS; PI: Malhotra), which obtains deep slitless spectra of all sources in four fields, and was designed to minimize contamination in observations of previously-identified high-redshift galaxy candidates. The FIGS data can potentially spectroscopically confirm the redshifts of galaxies, and as Ly{alpha} emission is resonantly scattered by neutral gas, FIGS can also constrain the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during the epoch of reionization. These data have sufficient depth to detect Ly{alpha} emission in this epoch, as Tilvi et al. (2016) have published the FIGS detection of previously known (Finkelstein et al. 2013) Ly{alpha} emission at z = 7.51. The FIGS data use five separate roll-angles of HST to mitigate the contamination by nearby galaxies. We created a method that accounts for and removes the contamination from surrounding galaxies, and also removes any dispersed continuum light from each individual spectrum (Pirzkal et al. 2017). We searched for significant (> 4{sigma}) emission lines using two different automated detection methods, free of any visual inspection biases. Applying these methods on photometrically-selected high-redshift candidates between 6 < z < 8 we find two emission lines, one previously published by Tilvi et al. (2016), and a new line at 1.028{mu}m. We identify this lines as Ly{alpha} at z = 7.452 +/- 0.003. This newly spectroscopically confirmed galaxy has the highest Ly{alpha} rest-frame equivalent width (EW Ly{alpha}) yet published at z > 7 (140.3 +/- 19.0{AA}).
We present near-infrared spectroscopy and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of EROJ003707+0909.5, the brightest of three gravitationally-lensed images of an Extremely Red Object (ERO) at z=1.6, in the field of the massive cluster A68 (z=0.255). We exploit the superlative resolution of our HST data and the enhanced spatial resolution and sensitivity afforded by the lens amplification to reconstruct the source-plane properties of this ERO. Our morphological and photometric analysis reveals that EROJ003707 is an L* early-type disk-galaxy and we estimate that ~10 per cent of EROs with (R-K)>=5.3 and K<=21 may have similar properties. The unique association of passive EROs with elliptical galaxies therefore appears to be too simplistic. We speculate on the evolution of EROJ003707: if gas continues to cool onto this galaxy in the manner predicted by hierarchical galaxy formation models, then by the present day, EROJ003707 could evolve into a very luminous spiral galaxy.
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