The Rest-Frame Optical Properties of z ≃ 3 Galaxies

By A. Shapley, C. Steidel, K. Adelberger, Mark Dickinson, M. Giavalisco, M. Pettini. 2001

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We present the results of a near-infrared imaging survey of z ~ 3 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). The survey covers a total of 30 arcmin2 and includes 118 photometrically selected LBGs with Ks-band measurements, 63 of which also have J-band measurements, and 81 of which have spectroscopic redshifts. Using the distribution of optical ℛ magnitudes from previous work and ℛ-Ks colors for this subsample, we compute the rest-frame optical luminosity function of LBGs. This luminosity function is described by an analytic Schechter fit with a very steep faint-end slope of α = -1.85 ± 0.15, and it strikingly exceeds locally determined optical luminosity functions at brighter magnitudes, where it is fairly well constrained. The V-band luminosity density of only the observed bright end of the z ~ 3 LBG luminosity function already approaches that of all stars in the local universe. For the 81 galaxies with measured redshifts, we investigate the range of LBG stellar populations implied by the photometry that generally spans the range 900-5500 Å in the rest frame. The parameters under consideration are the star formation rate as a function of time, the time since the onset of star formation, and the degree of reddening and extinction by dust. While there are only weak constraints on the parameters for most of the individual galaxies, there are strong trends in the sample as a whole. With a wider wavelength baseline than most previous studies at similar redshifts, we confirm the trend that intrinsically more luminous galaxies are dustier. We also find that there is a strong correlation between extinction and the age of the star formation episode, in the sense that younger galaxies are dustier and have much higher star formation rates. The strong correlation between extinction and age, which we show is unlikely to be an artifact of the modeling procedure, has important implications for an evolutionary sequence among LBGs. A unified scenario that accounts for the observed trends in bright LBGs is one in which a relatively short period of very rapid star formation (hundreds of M☉ yr-1) lasts for roughly 50-100 Myr, after which both the extinction and star formation rate are considerably reduced and stars are formed at a more quiescent, but still rapid, rate for at least a few hundred megayears. In our sample, a considerable fraction (~20%) of the LBGs have best-fit star formation ages ≳1 Gyr, implied stellar masses of ≳1010 M☉, and are still forming stars at ~30 M☉ yr-1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

• UV-CONTINUUM SLOPES AT z  ∼  4–7 FROM THE HUDF09+ERS+CANDELS OBSERVATIONS: DISCOVERY OF A WELL-DEFINED UV COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATIONSHIP FOR z ⩾ 4 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2011, background): “These parameters are fairly representative for what has been found in stellar population models of luminous z ∼ 2-4 galaxies (e.g., Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001, 2005; Erb et al. 2006b; Reddy et al. 2006b).”
• Damped Lyman α systems in galaxy formation simulations (2008, methodology): “In Figure 15 we have plotted the distribution of our DLA stellar masses and compared it with the estimated range of observed LBG’s stellar masses, using the results of Shapley et al. (2001) adapted as described above for our Kroupa IMF.”
• THE SINS SURVEY: MODELING THE DYNAMICS OF z ∼ 2 GALAXIES AND THE HIGH-z TULLY–FISHER RELATION (2009, background): “…that is not detected in the multicolor SED, but would still contribute to the total dynamical and stellar mass (see the discussion by, e.g. Shapley et al. 2001, Papovich et al. 2001, and for the galaxies with available IRAC photometry Wuyts et al. 2007), or that the dynamical mass is…”
• STAR FORMATION AND DUST OBSCURATION AT z ≈ 2: GALAXIES AT THE DAWN OF DOWNSIZING (2009, methodology): “…used to correct the UV light of Lyman-break galaxies (LBG) is applicable in our sample only for objects with M∗ ∼ 3× 1010 M⊙ –which incidentally is very close to the median stellar mass of LBG galaxies (Shapley et al. 2001)– but would grossly underestimate the correction for more massive galaxies.”
• CONSTRAINTS ON THE ASSEMBLY AND DYNAMICS OF GALAXIES. I. DETAILED REST-FRAME OPTICAL MORPHOLOGIES ON KILOPARSEC SCALE OF z ∼ 2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “We followed standard procedures (e.g. Shapley et al. 2001; Erb et al. 2006; Förster Schreiber et al. 2006a), exploring also a range of parameters and model ingredients to assess possible systematics from the assumptions adopted.”
• Ultradeep Near-Infrared ISAAC Observations of the Hubble Deep Field South: Observations, Reduction, Multicolor Catalog, and Photometric Redshifts (2002, background): “…confirmed at ze2 and have been subject to targeted studies on spatial clustering (Giavalisco & Dickinson 2001), internal kinematics (Pettini et al. 1998, 2001), dust properties (Adelberger & Steidel 2000), and stellar composition (Shapley et al. 2001; Papovich, Dickinson, & Ferguson 2001).”
• ON THE STELLAR POPULATIONS AND EVOLUTION OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT 6.3 < z ⩽ 8.6 (2009, background): “At z∼ 2− 3, the inferred stellar mass of “L∗” UV–selected galaxies are on the order of 1010 M⊙ (Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001; Erb et al. 2006b; Reddy et al. 2006), and there are UV–selected galaxies with stellar masses exceeding 1011 M⊙ at these redshifts (Shapley et al. 2005; Erb et…”
• THE CHARACTERISTIC STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 2–7 (2012, background): “…et al. 2006; CB11), and the degree to which simple star formation histories can capture the complexity of the “real” star formation history of a galaxy (e.g., Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001, 2005; Marchesini et al. 2009; Muzzin et al. 2009; Maraston et al. 2010; Papovich et al. 2011).”
• Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies (2013, methodology): “Subsequent modeling of broadband data has largely followed this approach (e.g., Brinchmann & Ellis 2000, Papovich, Dickinson & Ferguson 2001, Shapley et al. 2001, Salim et al. 2007).”
• The Assembly of Diversity in the Morphologies and Stellar Populations of High-Redshift Galaxies (2005, background): “…are comparable to those of present-day bulges and lower redshift galactic spheroidal components (Giavalisco et al. 1996, 1998; Lowenthal et al. 1997; Giavalisco &Dickinson 2001; Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001), and thus it is tempting to equate them with a one-to-one correspondence.”
• The Rest-Frame Optical Properties of SCUBA Galaxies (2004, methodology): “These include surveys for star-forming galaxies selected photometrically either in their rest-frame UV continuum light (Shapley et al. 2001; Steidel et al. 2004) or in their rest-frame optical continuum light (Franx et al. 2003; Daddi et al. 2003, 2004; Cimatti et al. 2004) or through their intense…”
• Keck spectroscopy of faint 3 < z < 7 Lyman break galaxies – I. New constraints on cosmic reionization from the luminosity and redshift-dependent fraction of Lyman α emission (2010, methodology): “While this is true if one compares the LAE samples to the well-studied spectroscopic z 3 population (e.g. Shapley et al. 2001, 2003), current photometric LBG samples extend to much fainter UV luminosities (e.g. MUV −16 at z 4 in the Ultra Deep Field), and as we have discussed above, our…”
• COMPLETING THE CENSUS OF Lyα EMITTERS AT THE REIONIZATION EPOCH (2011, background): “A high fraction of LAEs among LBGs in the early universe is naturally expected if a LBG appears as a LAE during its initial starburst phase, when it is still dust-free (Shapley et al. 2001).”
• The Spatial Clustering of Star-forming Galaxies at Redshifts 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 3.5 (2004, background): “Shapley et al. (2001) estimate a lifetime for the typical LBG of 3 ; 108 yr, for example, which implies that the typical LBG will be bright enough for us to detect for only about half of the time that elapsed between the survey selection limits of z 3:4 and 2.6.”
• Resolved spectroscopy of gravitationally lensed galaxies: recovering coherent velocity fields in subluminous z ~ 2-3 galaxies (2009, background): “…1.5) over the past decade have mapped the demographics of the populations as a whole yielding valuable data on their inte- grated star formation rates, stellar and dynamical masses, metallicities and morphologies (Shapley et al. 2001, 2003; Reddy & Steidel 2004; Erb et al. 2006; Law et al. 2007a).”
• The Distribution of Metallicity in the Intergalactic Medium at z ~ 2.5: O VI and C IV Absorption in the Spectra of Seven QSOs (2003, background): “107 years for a M & 15M⊙ star) and galactic winds (τ ∼ 107−108 years; Shapley et al. 2001) is shorter than cosmic timescales (τ ∼ 109 years) at z ∼ 2.5.”
• SPECTROSCOPIC OBSERVATIONS OF LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS ∼4, 5, AND 6 IN THE GOODS-SOUTH FIELD (2009, background): “We further note that at z ∼> 6, the age of the Universe is of the order of the duration of the LBG phase (∼ 0.5 − 1 Gyr — Shapley et al. 2001; Papovich et al. 2001; Lee et al. 2008).”
• Ultraviolet to Mid-Infrared Observations of Star-forming Galaxies at z ~ 2: Stellar Masses and Stellar Populations (2005, methodology): “Systematic Uncertainties Even neglecting the effects of photometric uncertainties, parameters derived from SED fitting are subject to significant degeneracies and systematics, primarily because of the inability to constrain the starformation history (Shapley et al. 2001; Papovich et al. 2001).”