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

By R. Bouwens, G. Illingworth, P. Oesch, M. Franx, I. Labbé, M. Trenti, P. V. van Dokkum, C. Carollo, V. González, R. Smit and 1 more. 2011

364 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ultra-deep Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and WFC3/IR HUDF+HUDF09 data, along with the wide-area GOODS+ERS+CANDELS data over the CDF-S GOODS field, are used to measure UV colors, expressed as the UV-continuum slope β, of star-forming galaxies over a wide range of luminosity (0.1L*z = 3 to 2L*z = 3) at high redshift (z  ∼  7 to z  ∼  4). β is measured using all ACS and WFC3/IR passbands uncontaminated by Lyα and spectral breaks. Extensive tests show that our β measurements are only subject to minimal biases. Using a different selection procedure, Dunlop et al. recently found large biases in their β measurements. To reconcile these different results, we simulated both approaches and found that β measurements for faint sources are subject to large biases if the same passbands are used both to select the sources and to measure β. High-redshift galaxies show a well-defined rest-frame UV color–magnitude (CM) relationship that becomes systematically bluer toward fainter UV luminosities. No evolution is seen in the slope of the UV CM relationship in the first 1.5 Gyr, though there is a small evolution in the zero point to redder colors from z  ∼  7 to z  ∼  4. This suggests that galaxies are evolving along a well-defined sequence in the LUV–color (β) plane (a “star-forming sequence”?). Dust appears to be the principal factor driving changes in the UV color β with luminosity. These new larger β samples lead to improved dust extinction estimates at z  ∼  4–7 and confirm that the extinction is essentially zero at low luminosities and high redshifts. Inclusion of the new dust extinction results leads to (1) excellent agreement between the star formation rate (SFR) density at z  ∼  4–8 and that inferred from the stellar mass density; and (2) to higher specific star formation rates (SSFRs) at z ≳ 4, suggesting that the SSFR may evolve modestly (by factors of ∼2) from z  ∼  4–7 to z  ∼  2.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d7ae536c154c9386f3c4286f447cb59dcfdb8c64

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. C. Conroy
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. R. Dav'e
6. R. Somerville
7. Richard S. Ellis
8. M. Franx

In Instrumentation

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. C. Conroy
3. P. Hopkins
4. L. Hernquist
5. M. Franx
6. Richard S. Ellis
7. R. Dav'e
8. R. Somerville

Citations in the corpus

• KECK SPECTROSCOPY OF 3 < z < 7 FAINT LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES: THE IMPORTANCE OF NEBULAR EMISSION IN UNDERSTANDING THE SPECIFIC STAR FORMATION RATE AND STELLAR MASS DENSITY (2012, methodology): “For each realisation of the UV LF, we draw a UV slope, β, by adopting the redshift-dependent β − MUV scaling relationships (Bouwens et al. 2012b).”
• ALMA SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD: THE INFRARED EXCESS OF UV-SELECTED z = 2–10 GALAXIES AS A FUNCTION OF UV-CONTINUUM SLOPE AND STELLAR MASS (2016, methodology): “The β value we utilize here is motivated by the results of Bouwens et al. (2012), Finkelstein et al. (2012), Bouwens et al. (2014), Kurczynski et al. (2014), and Wilkins et al. (2016a) who find evidence for bluer slopes for higher redshift and generally fainter, lower-mass galaxies. prescriptions…”
• Ultraviolet emission lines in young low-mass galaxies at z ≃ 2: physical properties and implications for studies at z > 7 (2014, background): “…subL⋆ galaxies (e.g., Reddy & Steidel 2009, Oesch et al. 2010, Alavi et al. 2014), and the dominance of such low luminosity system becomes even more pronounced at yet earlier times (e.g., Bunker et al. 2010, Oesch et al. 2012, Bouwens et al. 2012, Schenker et ⋆ E-mail: dpstark@email.arizona.edu al.”
• ESCAPE FRACTION OF IONIZING PHOTONS DURING REIONIZATION: EFFECTS DUE TO SUPERNOVA FEEDBACK AND RUNAWAY OB STARS (2014, background): “Given that galaxies are more actively star forming at high redshift (e.g.Bouwens et al. 2012; Dunlop et al. 2012), it has been suggested that there may be a correlation between star formation rate andfesc, and possibly evolving fescwith redshift (Kuhlen & Faucher-Giguère 2012).”
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