No Arabic abstract
The Lynx arc, with a redshift of 3.357, was discovered during spectroscopic follow-up of the z=0.570 cluster RX J0848+4456 from the ROSAT Deep Cluster Survey. The arc is characterized by a very red R-K color and strong, narrow emission lines. Analysis of HST WFPC2 imaging and Keck optical and infrared spectroscopy shows that the arc is an hii galaxy magnified by a factor of ~10 by a complex cluster environment. The high intrinsic luminosity, the emission line spectrum, the absorption components seen in Lyalpha and C IV, and the restframe ultraviolet continuum are all consistent with a simple HII region model containing ~ 10^6 hot O stars. The best fit parameters for this model imply a very hot ionizing continuum (T_BB ~ 80,000 K), high ionization parameter (log U ~ -1), and low nebular metallicity (Z / Z_odot ~ 0.05). The narrowness of the emission lines requires a low mass-to-light ratio for the ionizing stars, suggestive of an extremely low metallicity stellar cluster. The apparent overabundance of silicon in the nebula could indicate enrichment by past pair instability supernovae, requiring stars more massive than ~140 M_odot.
In this letter, we reconstruct the formation pathway of MRG-S0851, a massive, $log M_*/M_odot=11.02pm0.04$, strongly lensed, red, galaxy at $z=1.883pm0.001$. While the global photometry and spatially-resolved outskirts of MRG-S0851 imply an early-formation scenario with a slowly decreasing or constant star-formation history, a joint fit of 2D grism spectroscopy and photometry reveals a more complex scenario: MRG-S0851 is likely to be experiencing a centrally-concentrated rejuvenation in the inner $sim$1 kpc in the last $sim$100 Myr of evolution. We estimate $0.5pm0.1%$ of the total stellar mass is formed in this phase. Rejuvenation episodes are suggested to be infrequent for massive galaxies at $zsim2$, but as our analyses indicate, more examples of complex star-formation histories may yet be hidden within existing data. By adding a FUV color criterion to the standard U-V/V-J diagnostic, thereby heightening our sensitivity to recent star formation, we show that we can select populations of galaxies with similar spectral energy distributions to that of MRG-S0851, but note that deep follow-up spectroscopic observations and/or spatially resolved analyses are necessary to robustly confirm the rejuvenation of these candidates. Using our criteria with MRG-S0851 as a prototype, we estimate that $sim$1% of massive quiescent galaxies at $1<z<2$ are potentially rejuvenating.
We discuss the optical spectrum of a multiply-imaged arc resolved by HST in the $z$=0.175 cluster A2218. The spectrum, obtained with LDSS-2 on the 4.2m William Herschel telescope, reveals the source to be a galaxy at a redshift $z$=2.515 in excellent agreement with the value predicted by Kneib et al. (1996) on the basis of their inversion of a highly-constrained mass model for the lensing cluster. The source is extremely blue in its optical-infrared colours, consistent with active star formation, and the spectrum reveals absorption lines characteristic of a young stellar population. Of particular significance is the absence of Lyman-$alpha$ emission but the presence of a broad Lyman-$alpha$ absorption. The spectrum is similar to that of other, much fainter, galaxies found at high redshift by various techniques and illustrates the important role that lensing can play in detailed studies of the properties of distant galaxies.
Most molecular gas studies of $z > 2.5$ galaxies are of intrinsically bright objects, despite the galaxy population being primarily normal galaxies with less extreme star formation rates. Observations of normal galaxies at high redshift provide a more representative view of galaxy evolution and star formation, but such observations are challenging to obtain. In this work, we present ALMA $rm ^{12}CO(J = 3 rightarrow 2)$ observations of a sub-millimeter selected galaxy group at $z = 2.9$, resulting in spectroscopic confirmation of seven images from four member galaxies. These galaxies are strongly lensed by the MS 0451.6-0305 foreground cluster at $z = 0.55$, allowing us to probe the molecular gas content on levels of $rm 10^9-10^{10} ; M_odot$. Four detected galaxies have molecular gas masses of $rm (0.2-13.1) times 10^{10} ; M_odot$, and the non-detected galaxies have inferred molecular gas masses of $rm < 8.0 times 10^{10} ; M_odot$. We compare these new data to a compilation of 546 galaxies up to $z = 5.3$, and find that depletion times decrease with increasing redshift. We then compare the depletion times of galaxies in overdense environments to the field scaling relation from the literature, and find that the depletion time evolution is steeper for galaxies in overdense environments than for those in the field. More molecular gas measurements of normal galaxies in overdense environments at higher redshifts ($z > 2.5$) are needed to verify the environmental dependence of star formation and gas depletion.
We present the detection at 89 $mu$m (observed frame) of the {it Herschel}-selected gravitationally lensed starburst galaxy HATLASJ1429-0028 (also known as G15v2.19) in 15 minutes with the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-plus (HAWC+) onboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The spectacular lensing system consists of an edge-on foreground disk galaxy at $z$ = 0.22 and a nearly complete Einstein ring of an intrinsic ultra-luminous infrared galaxy at $z$ = 1.03. Is this high IR luminosity powered by pure star formation (SF) or also an active galactic nucleus (AGN)? Previous nebular line diagnostics indicate that it is star-formation dominated. We perform a 27-band multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution modeling (SED) including the new SOFIA/HAWC+ data to constrain the fractional AGN contribution to the total IR luminosity. The AGN fraction in the IR turns out to be negligible. In addition, J1429-0028 serves as a testbed for comparing SED results from different models/templates and SED codes (MAGPHYS, SED3FIT, and CIGALE). We stress that star formation history is the dominant source of uncertainty in the derived stellar mass (as high as a factor of $sim$ 10) even in the case of extensive photometric coverage. Furthermore, the detection of a source at $z$ $sim$ 1 with SOFIA/HAWC+ demonstrates the potential of utilizing this facility for distant galaxy studies including the decomposition of SF/AGN components, which cannot be accomplished with other current facilities.
By combining HST imaging with optical (VIMOS) and near-infrared (SINFONI) integral field spectroscopy we exploit the gravitational potential of a massive, rich cluster at z=0.9 to study the internal properties of a gravitationally lensed galaxy at z=4.88. Using a detailed gravitational lens model of the cluster RCS0224-002 we reconstruct the source-frame morphology of the lensed galaxy on 200pc scales and find an ~L* Lyman-break galaxy with an intrinsic size of only 2.0x0.8kpc, a velocity gradient of <60km/s and an implied dynamical mass of 1.0x10^10Mo within 2kpc. We infer an integrated star-formation rate of just 12+/-2Mo/yr from the intrinsic [OII] emission line flux. The Ly-alpha emission appears redshifted by +200+/-40km/s with respect to the [OII] emission. The Ly-alpha is also significantly more extended than the nebular emission, extending over 11.9x2.4kpc. Over this area, the Ly-alpha centroid varies by less than 10km/s. By examining the spatially resolved structure of the [OII] and asymmetric Ly-alpha emission lines we investigate the nature of this system. The model for local starburst galaxies suggested by Mass-Hesse et al. (2003) provides a good description of our data, and suggests that the galaxy is surrounded by a galactic-scale bi-polar outflow which has recently burst out of the system. The outflow, which appears to be currently located >30kpc from the galaxy, is escaping at a speed of upto ~500km/s. Although the mass of the outflow is uncertain, the geometry and velocity of the outflow suggests that the ejected material is travelling far faster than escape velocity and will travel more than 1Mpc (comoving) before eventually stalling.