The OTELO survey: Revealing a population of low-luminosity current/active star-forming galaxies at z$\sim0.9$

Abstract

We study a sample of H$\beta$ emission line sources at $z\sim$0.9 to identify the star-forming (SF) galaxies sample and characterise them in terms of line luminosity, stellar mass, SFR, and morphology. The final aim is to obtain the H$\beta$ luminosity function (LF) of the SF galaxies at this redshift. We used the instrument OSIRIS at GTC to obtain the pseudo spectra of emission line sources in the OTELO field. From these pseudo spectra, we identified the objects with H$\beta$ emission. As the resolution of the pseudo spectra allowed us to separate H$\beta$ from O[III], we derive the H$\beta$ flux without contamination. Using data from the extended OTELO catalogue, we discriminated AGNs and studied the SFR, the stellar mass, and the morphology of the SF galaxies. We find that our sample is located on the main sequence of SF galaxies. The sources are morphologically classified, mostly as disc-like galaxies (76%), and 90% of the sample are low-mass galaxies ($M_*<10^{10}\;\mathrm{M}_\odot$). The low-mass SF galaxies at $z \sim 0.9$ that were detected by OTELO present similar properties as low-mass SF galaxies in the local universe, suggesting that these kinds of objects do not have a favorite epoch of formation and star formation enhancement from $z \sim 1$ to now. Our sample of 40 H$\beta$ SF galaxies includes the faintest H$\beta$ emitters detected so far. This allows us to constrain the faint end of the LF for the H$\beta$ line alone with a minimum luminosity of $\log L = 39 \;\mathrm{erg\,s}^{-1}$, which is a hundred times fainter than previous surveys. The dust-corrected OTELO H$\beta$ LF established the faint-end slope as $\alpha =-1.36\pm 0.15$. We increased the scope of the analysis to the bright end by adding ancillary data from the literature, which was not dust-corrected in this case. The obtained slope for this extended LF is $\alpha = -1.43\pm 0.12$.