THE DEAD SEQUENCE: A CLEAR BIMODALITY IN GALAXY COLORS FROM z = 0 to z = 2.5

By G. Brammer, K. Whitaker, P. V. van Dokkum, D. Marchesini, I. Labbé, M. Franx, M. Kriek, R. Quadri, G. Illingworth, Kyoung-soo Lee and 2 more. 2009

187 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We select 25,000 galaxies from the NEWFIRM Medium Band Survey (NMBS) to study the rest-frame U − V color distribution of galaxies at 0 < z ≲ 2.5. The five unique NIR filters of the NMBS enable the precise measurement of photometric redshifts and rest-frame colors for 9900 galaxies at 1 < z < 2.5. The rest-frame U − V color distribution at all z ≲ 2.5 is bimodal, with a red peak, a blue peak, and a population of galaxies in between (the green valley). Model fits to the optical–NIR spectral energy distributions and the distribution of MIPS-detected galaxies indicate that the colors of galaxies in the green valley are determined largely by the amount of reddening by dust. This result does not support the simplest interpretation of green valley objects as a transition from blue star forming to red quiescent galaxies. We show that correcting the rest-frame colors for dust reddening allows a remarkably clean separation between the red and blue sequences up to z ∼ 2.5. Our study confirms that dusty-starburst galaxies can contribute a significant fraction to red-sequence samples selected on the basis of a single rest-frame color (i.e., U − V), so extra care must be taken if samples of truly “red and dead” galaxies are desired. Interestingly, of galaxies detected at 24 μm, 14% remain on the red sequence after applying the reddening correction.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f50f8b36973534d1fc2eb9de98477ce311a6e02b

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Citations in the corpus

A PUBLIC Ks-SELECTED CATALOG IN THE COSMOS/UltraVISTA FIELD: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR POPULATION PARAMETERS, (2013, background): “…that of quiescent and passively-evolving galaxies, whereas the bluer clump has a much wider range of colors, usually interpreted as the star-forming population with a range of dust extinctions and geometries (e.g., Labbé et al. 2005; Williams et al. 2009; Brammer et al. 2009; Patel et al. 2012b).”
CAN MINOR MERGING ACCOUNT FOR THE SIZE GROWTH OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES? NEW RESULTS FROM THE CANDELS SURVEY (2011, unknown): “Here (U − V )cor = (U − V )rest − 0.47AV (3) represents the extinction-corrected rest-frame U−V color (Brammer et al. 2009).”
Inferring the star formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with bagpipes: evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms (2017, background): “Two common methods exist for selecting samples of quenched galaxies, firstly based on their rest-frame UVJ colours (Williams et al. 2009), and secondly using a cut in specific SFR (sSFR; SFR divided by M∗), often evolving with observed redshift (e.g. Pacifici et al. 2016).”
CANDELS MULTI-WAVELENGTH CATALOGS: SOURCE DETECTION AND PHOTOMETRY IN THE GOODS-SOUTH FIELD (2013, background): “This color bimodality has been reported up to z∼3 (e.g., Bell et al. 2004; Cassata et al. 2008; Kriek et al. 2009; Brammer et al. 2009; Whitaker et al. 2011).”
COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATIONS OF ACTIVE AND NON-ACTIVE GALAXIES IN THE CHANDRA DEEP FIELDS: HIGH-REDSHIFT CONSTRAINTS AND STELLAR-MASS SELECTION EFFECTS (2010, background): “(2) of Brammer et al. (2009),∆UV = 0.47AV, to correct for dust reddening.”
THE STAR FORMATION HISTORY OF MASS-SELECTED GALAXIES IN THE COSMOS FIELD (2010, background): “45 Also at high z there is evidence for the existence of quiescent systems that are predominantly massive (e.g. Cimatti et al. 2004; Kriek et al. 2006, 2008; Brammer et al. 2009).”
A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES (2013, background): “Observationally, galaxies exhibit a bimodal distribution in color that persists even at high redshifts (e.g., Strateva et al. 2001; Kauffmann et al. 2003a; Brammer et al. 2009).”
THE MOSFIRE DEEP EVOLUTION FIELD (MOSDEF) SURVEY: REST-FRAME OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY FOR ∼1500 H-SELECTED GALAXIES AT 1.37 ≤ z ≤ 3.8 ?> (2014, methodology): “We derive rest-frame colors for all galaxies in the MOSDEF and parent samples, using the EAzY code (Brammer et al. 2008) and following the method de- scribed by Brammer et al. (2009).”
PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1 (2013, background): “These broad empirical trends have been shown to persist at least to z ∼ 3 (e.g., Bell et al. 2004; Cooper et al. 2007; Cassata et al. 2008; Brammer et al. 2009; Whitaker et al. 2011).”
Galaxy morphology and star formation in the Illustris Simulation at z = 0 (2015, unknown): “This roughly matches the definition of quiescent or passive galaxies used in several other studies (e.g., Brammer et al. 2009; Woo et al. 2015).”
THE MULTIWAVELENGTH SURVEY BY YALE–CHILE (MUSYC): DEEP MEDIUM-BAND OPTICAL IMAGING AND HIGH-QUALITY 32-BAND PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS IN THE ECDF-S (2010, methodology): “…sequence members in Figure 13 have rest-frame V − J colors which place them in the star-forming sequence, consistent with previous work at these redshifts using morphological information (e.g., Ruhland et al. 2009) and with the results in (Brammer et al. 2009) and Whitaker et al. (2010, in prep).”
THE GROWTH OF MASSIVE GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 (2009, methodology): “More details are provided in Brammer et al. (2009) and, in particular, in K. Whitaker et al., in preperation.”
THE NEWFIRM MEDIUM-BAND SURVEY: PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS, REDSHIFTS, AND THE BIMODAL COLOR DISTRIBUTION OF GALAXIES OUT TO z ∼ 3 (2011, methodology): “In Brammer et al. (2009), we selected 25,000 galaxies from the NMBS showing that the dust-corrected rest-frame U–”
GALAXY CLUSTERING IN THE NEWFIRM MEDIUM BAND SURVEY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STELLAR MASS AND DARK MATTER HALO MASS AT 1 < z < 2 (2010, methodology): “More details are provided in Brammer et al. (2009).”
MUSE sneaks a peek at extreme ram-pressure stripping events - I. A kinematic study of the archetypal galaxy ESO137-001 (2014, background): “Extensive discussion on the color properties in large samples of galaxies can be found inthe literature (e.g. Bower et al. 1992; Strateva et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004; Bell et al. 2004; Weiner et al. 2005; Brammer et al. 2009).”
The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early-and late-type galaxies (2014, unknown): “…(2014) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/440/1/889/1749989 by Haverford College Library user on 20 February 2018 Brammer et al. 2009; Williams et al. 2009; Cardamone et al. 2010), although this effect should be of limited importance at low redshift, where sSFR…”
BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “The color bimodality has also been observed at higher redshifts (e.g., Brammer et al. 2009; Whitaker et al. 2011).”