arXiv subjects

Rosalind E. Skelton

Publications and source records attributed to Rosalind E. Skelton.

53 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Confirmation of Small Dynamical and Stellar Masses for Extreme Emission Line Galaxies at z~2

Spectroscopic observations from the Large Binocular Telescope and the Very Large Telescope reveal kinematically narrow lines (~50 km/s) for a sample of 14 Extreme Emission Line Galaxies (EELGs) at redshifts 1.4 < z < 2.3. These measurements imply that the total dynamical masses of these systems are low (< 3x10^9 M_sun). Their large [O III] 5007 equivalent widths (500-1100 Angstroms) and faint blue continuum emission imply young ages of 10-100 Myr and stellar masses of 10^8-10^9 M_sun, confirming the presence of a violent starburst. The dynamical masses represent the first such determinations for low-mass galaxies at z > 1. The stellar mass formed in this vigorous starburst phase represents a large fraction of the total (dynamical) mass, without a significantly massive underlying population of older stars. The occurrence of such intense events in shallow potentials strongly suggests that supernova-driven winds must be of critical importance in the subsequent evolution of these systems.

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arXiv2013

A CANDELS - 3D-HST Synergy: Resolved Star Formation Patterns at 0.7 < z < 1.5

We analyze the resolved stellar populations of 473 massive star-forming galaxies at 0.7 < z < 1.5, with multi-wavelength broad-band imaging from CANDELS and Halpha surface brightness profiles at the same kiloparsec resolution from 3D-HST. Together, this unique data set sheds light on how the assembled stellar mass is distributed within galaxies, and where new stars are being formed. We find the Halpha morphologies to resemble more closely those observed in the ACS I band than in the WFC3 H band, especially for the larger systems. We next derive a novel prescription for Halpha dust corrections, which accounts for extra extinction towards HII regions. The prescription leads to consistent SFR estimates and reproduces the observed relation between the Halpha/UV luminosity ratio and visual extinction, both on a pixel-by-pixel and on a galaxy-integrated level. We find the surface density of star formation to correlate with the surface density of assembled stellar mass for spatially resolved regions within galaxies, akin to the so-called 'main sequence of star formation' established on a galaxy-integrated level. Deviations from this relation towards lower equivalent widths are found in the inner regions of galaxies. Clumps and spiral features, on the other hand, are associated with enhanced Halpha equivalent widths, bluer colors, and higher specific star formation rates compared to the underlying disk. Their Halpha/UV luminosity ratio is lower than that of the underlying disk, suggesting the ACS clump selection preferentially picks up those regions of elevated star formation activity that are the least obscured by dust. Our analysis emphasizes that monochromatic studies of galaxy structure can be severely limited by mass-to-light ratio variations due to dust and spatially inhomogeneous star formation histories.

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arXiv2013

The Assembly of Milky Way-like Galaxies Since z~2.5

Galaxies with the mass of the Milky Way dominate the stellar mass density of the Universe but it is uncertain how and when they were assembled. Here we study progenitors of these galaxies out to z=2.5, using data from the 3D-HST and CANDELS Treasury surveys. We find that galaxies with present-day stellar masses of log(M)~10.7 built ~90% of their stellar mass since z=2.5, with most of the star formation occurring before z=1. In marked contrast to the assembly history of massive elliptical galaxies, mass growth is not limited to large radii: the mass in the central 2 kpc of the galaxies increased by a factor of 3.2+-0.8 between z=2.5 and z=1. We therefore rule out simple models in which bulges were fully assembled at high redshift and disks gradually formed around them. Instead, bulges (and black holes) likely formed in lockstep with disks, through bar instabilities, migration, or other processes. We find that after z=1 the growth in the central regions gradually stopped and the disk continued to build, consistent with recent studies of the gas distributions in z~1 galaxies and the properties of many spiral galaxies today.

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arXiv2013

Stellar Kinematics of z~2 Galaxies and the Inside-Out Growth of Quiescent Galaxies

Using stellar kinematics measurements, we investigate the growth of massive, quiescent galaxies from z~2 to today. We present X-Shooter spectra from the UV to NIR and dynamical mass measurements of 5 quiescent massive (>10^11 Msun) galaxies at z~2. This triples the sample of z>1.5 galaxies with well constrained (dsigma <100 km/s) velocity dispersion measurements. From spectral population synthesis modeling we find that these galaxies have stellar ages that range from 0.5-2 Gyr, with no signs of ongoing star formation. We measure velocity dispersions (290-450 km/s) from absorption lines and find that they are 1.6-2.1 times higher than those of galaxies in the SDSS at the same mass. Sizes are measured using GALFIT from HST-WFC3 H160 and UDS K-band images. The dynamical masses correspond well to the SED based stellar masses, with dynamical masses that are ~15% higher. We find that M_*/M_dyn may decrease slightly with time, which could reflect the increase of the dark matter fraction within an increasing effective radius. We combine different stellar kinematic studies from the literature, and examine the structural evolution from z~2 to z~0: we confirm that at fixed dynamical mass, the effective radius increases by a factor of ~2.8, and the velocity dispersion decreases by a factor of ~1.7. The mass density within one effective radius decreases by a factor of ~20, while within a fixed physical radius (1 kpc) it decreases only mildly (~2). When we allow for an evolving mass limit by selecting a population of galaxies at fixed number density, a stronger size growth with time is found (~4), velocity dispersion decreases by a factor of ~1.4, and interestingly, the mass density within 1 kpc is consistent with no evolution. This finding suggests that massive quiescent galaxies at ~2 grow inside-out, consistent with the expectations from minor mergers.

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arXiv2013

3D-HST Data Release v3.0: Extremely Deep Spectra in the UDF and WFC3 Mosaics in the 3D-HST/CANDELS Fields

3D-HST is a 248-orbit Treasury program to provide WFC3 and ACS grism spectroscopy over four extra-galactic fields (AEGIS, COSMOS, GOODS-South, and UDS), augmented with previously obtained data in GOODS-North. We present a new data release of the 3D-HST survey, version v3.0. This release follows the initial v0.5 release that accompanied the survey description paper (Brammer et al. 2012). The new v3.0 release includes the deepest near-IR HST grism spectra currently in existence, extracted from the 8-17 orbit depth observations in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Contamination-corrected 2D and 1D spectra, as well as derived redshifts, are made available for >250 objects in this 2'x2'field. The spectra are of extraordinary quality, and show emission features in many galaxies as faint as F140W=26-27, absorption features in quiescent galaxies at z~2, and several active galactic nuclei. In addition to these extremely deep grism data we provide reduced WFC3 F125W, F140W, and F160W image mosaics of all five 3D-HST/CANDELS fields.

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arXiv2013

The Spatial Extent and Distribution of Star Formation in 3D-HST Mergers at z~1.5

We present an analysis of the spatial distribution of star formation in a sample of 60 visually identified galaxy merger candidates at z>1. Our sample, drawn from the 3D-HST survey, is flux-limited and was selected to have high star formation rates based on fits of their broad-band, low spatial resolution spectral energy distributions. It includes plausible pre-merger (close pairs) and post-merger (single objects with tidal features) systems, with total stellar masses and star formation rates derived from multi-wavelength photometry. Here we use near-infrared slitless spectra from 3D-HST which produce Halpha or [OIII] emission line maps as proxies for star-formation maps. This provides a first comprehensive high-resolution, empirical picture of where star formation occurred in galaxy mergers at the epoch of peak cosmic star formation rate. We find that detectable star formation can occur in one or both galaxy centres, or in tidal tails. The most common case (58%) is that star formation is largely concentrated in a single, compact region, coincident with the centre of (one of) the merger components. No correlations between star formation morphology and redshift, total stellar mass, or star formation rate are found. A restricted set of hydrodynamical merger simulations between similarly massive and gas-rich objects implies that star formation should be detectable in both merger components, when the gas fractions of the individual components are the same. This suggests that z~1.5 mergers typically occur between galaxies whose gas fractions, masses, and/or star formation rates are distinctly different from one another.

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arXiv2012

3D-HST Grism Spectroscopy of a Gravitationally Lensed, Low-metallicity Starburst Galaxy at z=1.847

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging and spectroscopy of the gravitational lens SL2SJ02176-0513, a cusp arc at z=1.847. The UV continuum of the lensed galaxy is very blue, which is seemingly at odds with its redder optical colors. The 3D-HST WFC3/G141 near-infrared spectrum of the lens reveals the source of this discrepancy to be extremely strong [OIII]5007 and H-beta emission lines with rest-frame equivalent widths of 2000 +/- 100 and 520 +/- 40 Angstroms, respectively. The source has a stellar mass ~10^8 Msun, sSFR \sim 100/Gyr, and detection of [OIII]4363 yields a metallicity of 12 + log(O/H) = 7.5 +/- 0.2. We identify local blue compact dwarf analogs to SL2SJ02176-0513, which are among the most metal-poor galaxies in the SDSS. The local analogs resemble the lensed galaxy in many ways, including UV/optical SED, spatial morphology and emission line equivalent widths and ratios. Common to SL2SJ02176-0513 and its local counterparts is an upturn at mid-IR wavelengths likely arising from hot dust heated by starbursts. The emission lines of SL2SJ02176-0513 are spatially resolved owing to the combination of the lens and the high spatial resolution of HST. The lensed galaxy is composed of two clumps with combined size r_e \sim 300 pc, and we resolve significant differences in UV color and emission line equivalent width between them. Though it has characteristics occasionally attributed to active galactic nuclei, we conclude that SL2SJ02176-0513 is a low-metallicity star-bursting dwarf galaxy. Such galaxies will be found in significant numbers in the full 3D-HST grism survey.

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arXiv2012

Halpha Equivalent Widths from the 3D-HST survey: evolution with redshift and dependence on stellar mass

We investigate the evolution of the Halpha equivalent width, EW(Halpha), with redshift and its dependence on stellar mass, taking advantage of the first data from the 3D-HST survey, a large spectroscopic Treasury program with the Hubble Space Telescope WFC3. Combining our Halpha measurements of 854 galaxies at 0.8<z<1.5 with those of ground based surveys at lower and higher redshift, we can consistently determine the evolution of the EW(Halpha) distribution from z=0 to z=2.2. We find that at all masses the characteristic EW(Halpha) is decreasing towards the present epoch, and that at each redshift the EW(Halpha) is lower for high-mass galaxies. We measure a slope of EW(Halpha) ~ (1+z)^(1.8) with little mass dependence. Qualitatively, this measurement is a model-independent confirmation of the evolution of star forming galaxies with redshift. A quantitative conversion of EW(Halpha) to sSFR is very model dependent, because of differential reddening corrections between the continuum SED and the Balmer lines. The observed EW(Halpha) can be reproduced with a simple model in which the SFR for galaxies rises to the epoch of z~2.5 and then decreases with time to z = 0. The model implies that the EW(Halpha) rises to 400 A at z=8. The sSFR evolves faster than EW(Halpha), as the mass-to-light ratio also evolves with redshift. In this context, we find that the sSFR evolves as (1+z)^(3.2), nearly independent of mass, consistent with previous reddening insensitive estimates. We confirm previous results that the observed slope of the sSFR-z relation is steeper than the one predicted by models, but models and observations agree in finding little mass dependence.

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arXiv2012

Large-Scale Star Formation-Driven Outflows at 1<z<2 in the 3D-HST Survey

We present evidence of large-scale outflows from three low-mass (log(M/M_sun)~9.75) star-forming (SFR >4 M_sun/yr) galaxies observed at z=1.24, z=1.35 and z=1.75 in the 3D-HST Survey. Each of these galaxies is located within a projected physical distance of 60 kpc around the sight line to the quasar SDSS J123622.93+621526.6, which exhibits well-separated strong (W_r>0.8A) Mg II absorption systems matching precisely to the redshifts of the three galaxies. We derive the star formation surface densities from the H-alpha emission in the WFC3 G141 grism observations for the galaxies and find that in each case the star formation surface density well-exceeds 0.1 M_sun/yr/kpc^2, the typical threshold for starburst galaxies in the local Universe. From a small but complete parallel census of the 0.65 0.8A Mg II covering fraction of star-forming galaxies at 1 0.4A Mg II absorbing gas around star-forming galaxies may evolve from z~2 to the present, consistent with recent observations of an increasing collimation of star formation-driven outflows with time from z~3.

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arXiv2012

Modeling the red sequence: Hierarchical growth yet slow luminosity evolution

We explore the effects of mergers on the evolution of massive early-type galaxies by modeling the evolution of their stellar populations in a hierarchical context. We investigate how a realistic red sequence population set up by z~1 evolves under different assumptions for the merger and star formation histories, comparing changes in color, luminosity and mass. The purely passive fading of existing red sequence galaxies, with no further mergers or star formation, results in dramatic changes at the bright end of the luminosity function and color-magnitude relation. Without mergers there is too much evolution in luminosity at a fixed space density compared to observations. The change in color and magnitude at a fixed mass resemble that of a passively evolving population that formed relatively recently, at z~2. Mergers amongst the red sequence population ("dry mergers") occurring after z=1 build up mass, counteracting the fading of the existing stellar populations to give smaller changes in both color and luminosity for massive galaxies. By allowing some galaxies to migrate from the blue cloud onto the red sequence after z=1 through gas-rich mergers, younger stellar populations are added to the red sequence. This manifestation of the progenitor bias increases the scatter in age and results in even smaller changes in color and luminosity between z=1 and z=0 at a fixed mass. The resultant evolution appears much slower, resembling the passive evolution of a population that formed at high redshift (z~3-5) and is in closer agreement with observations. Measurements of the luminosity and color evolution alone are not sufficient to distinguish between the purely passive evolution of an old population and cosmologically motivated hierarchical growth, although these scenarios have very different implications for the mass growth of early-type galaxies over the last half of cosmic history.

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arXiv2012

Spatially resolved Halpha maps and sizes of 57 strongly star-forming galaxies at z~1 from 3D-HST: evidence for rapid inside-out assembly of disk galaxies

We investigate the build-up of galaxies at z~1 using maps of Halpha and stellar continuum emission for a sample of 57 galaxies with rest-frame Halpha equivalent widths >100 Angstroms in the 3D-HST grism survey. We find that the Halpha emission broadly follows the rest-frame R-band light but that it is typically somewhat more extended and clumpy. We quantify the spatial distribution with the half-light radius. The median Halpha effective radius r_e(Halpha) is 4.2+-0.1 kpc but the sizes span a large range, from compact objects with r_e(Halpha) ~ 1.0 kpc to extended disks with r_e(Halpha) ~ 15 kpc. Comparing Halpha sizes to continuum sizes, we find =1.3+-0.1 for the full sample. That is, star formation, as traced by Halpha, typically occurs out to larger radii than the rest-frame R-band stellar continuum; galaxies are growing their radii and building up from the inside out. This effect appears to be somewhat more pronounced for the largest galaxies. Using the measured Halpha sizes, we derive star formation rate surface densities. We find that they range from ~0.05 Msun yr^{-1} kpc^{-2} for the largest galaxies to ~5 Msun yr^{-1} kpc^{-2} for the smallest galaxies, implying a large range in physical conditions in rapidly star-forming z~1 galaxies. Finally, we infer that all galaxies in the sample have very high gas mass fractions and stellar mass doubling times < 500 Myr. Although other explanations are also possible, a straightforward interpretation is that we are simultaneously witnessing the rapid formation of compact bulges and large disks at z~1.

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arXiv2011

First Results from the 3D-HST Survey: The Striking Diversity of Massive Galaxies at z>1

We present first results from the 3D-HST program, a near-IR spectroscopic survey performed with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. We have used 3D-HST spectra to measure redshifts and Halpha equivalent widths for a stellar mass-limited sample of 34 galaxies at 1 10^11 M(sun) in the COSMOS, GOODS, and AEGIS fields. We find that a substantial fraction of massive galaxies at this epoch are forming stars at a high rate: the fraction of galaxies with Halpha equivalent widths >10 A is 59%, compared to 10% among SDSS galaxies of similar masses at z=0.1. Galaxies with weak Halpha emission show absorption lines typical of 2-4 Gyr old stellar populations. The structural parameters of the galaxies, derived from the associated WFC3 F140W imaging data, correlate with the presence of Halpha: quiescent galaxies are compact with high Sersic index and high inferred velocity dispersion, whereas star-forming galaxies are typically large two-armed spiral galaxies, with low Sersic index. Some of these star forming galaxies might be progenitors of the most massive S0 and Sa galaxies. Our results challenge the idea that galaxies at fixed mass form a homogeneous population with small scatter in their properties. Instead we find that massive galaxies form a highly diverse population at z>1, in marked contrast to the local Universe.

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arXiv2010

The merger-driven evolution of massive galaxies

We explore the rate and impact of galaxy mergers on the massive galaxy population using the amplitude of the two-point correlation function on small scales for M > 5e10 M_sun galaxies from the COSMOS and COMBO-17 surveys. Using a pair fraction derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as a low-redshift benchmark, the large survey area at intermediate redshifts allows us to determine the evolution of the close pair fraction with unprecedented accuracy for a mass-selected sample: we find that the fraction of galaxies more massive than 5e10M_sun in pairs separated by less than 30 kpc in 3D space evolves as F(z) = (0.0130+/-0.0019)x(1+z)^1.21+/-0.25 between z = 0 and z = 1.2. Assuming a merger time scale of 0.5 Gyrs, the inferred merger rate is such that galaxies with mass in excess of 1e11 M_sun have undergone, on average, 0.5 (0.7) mergers involving progenitor galaxies both more massive than 5e10 M_sun since z = 0.6 (1.2). We also study the number density evolution of massive red sequence galaxies using published luminosity functions and constraints on the M/L evolution from the fundamental plane. Moreover, we demonstrate that the measured merger rate of massive galaxies is sufficient to explain this observed number density evolution in massive red sequence galaxies since z = 1.

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arXiv2009

Less than 10 percent of star formation in z=0.6 massive galaxies is triggered by major interactions

Both observations and simulations show that major tidal interactions or mergers between gas-rich galaxies can lead to intense bursts of starformation. Yet, the average enhancement in star formation rate (SFR) in major mergers and the contribution of such events to the cosmic SFR are not well estimated. Here we use photometric redshifts, stellar masses and UV SFRs from COMBO-17, 24 micron SFRs from Spitzer and morphologies from two deep HST cosmological survey fields (ECDFS/GEMS and A901/STAGES) to study the enhancement in SFR as a function of projected galaxy separation. We apply two-point projected correlation function techniques, which we augment with morphologically-selected very close pairs (separation <2 arcsec) and merger remnants from the HST imaging. Our analysis confirms that the most intensely star-forming systems are indeed interacting or merging. Yet, for massive (M* > 10^10 Msun) star-forming galaxies at 0.4<z<0.8, we find that the SFRs of galaxies undergoing a major interaction (mass ratios <1:4 and separations < 40 kpc) are only 1.80 +/- 0.30 times higher than the SFRs of non-interacting galaxies when averaged over all interactions and all stages of the interaction, in good agreement with other observational works. We demonstrate that these results imply that <10% of star formation at 0.4 < z < 0.8 is triggered directly by major mergers and interactions; these events are not important factors in the build-up of stellar mass since z=1.

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arXiv2009

The effect of dry mergers on the color-magnitude relation of early-type galaxies

We investigate the effect of dry merging on the color-magnitude relation (CMR) of galaxies and find that the amount of merging predicted by a hierarchical model results in a red sequence that compares well with the observed low-redshift relation. A sample of 29,000 early-type galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6 shows that the bright end of the CMR has a shallower slope and smaller scatter than the faint end. This magnitude dependence is predicted by a simple toy model in which gas-rich mergers move galaxies onto a "creation red sequence" (CRS) by quenching their star formation, and subsequent mergers between red, gas-poor galaxies (so-called "dry" mergers) move galaxies along the relation. We use galaxy merger trees from a semianalytic model of galaxy formation to test the amplitude of this effect and find a change in slope at the bright end that brackets the observations, using gas fraction thresholds of 10-30% to separate wet and dry mergers. A more realistic model that includes scatter in the CRS shows that dry merging decreases the scatter at the bright end. Contrary to previous claims, the small scatter in the observed CMR thus cannot be used to constrain the amount of dry merging.

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arXiv2009

History of Galaxy Interactions and their Impact on Star Formation over the Last 7 Gyr from GEMS

We perform a comprehensive estimate of the frequency of galaxy mergers and their impact on star formation over z~0.24--0.80 (lookback time T_b~3--7 Gyr) using 3698 (M*>=1e9 Msun) galaxies with GEMS HST, COMBO-17, and Spitzer data. Our results are: (1) Among 790 high mass (M*>=2.5e10 Msun) galaxies, the visually-based merger fraction over z~0.24--0.80, ranges from 9%+-5% to 8%+-2%. Lower limits on the major and minor merger fractions over this interval range from 1.1% to 3.5%, and 3.6% to 7.5%, respectively. This is the first approximate empirical estimate of the frequency of minor mergers at z<1. For a visibility timescale of ~0.5 Gyr, it follows that over T_b~3--7 Gyr, ~68% of high mass systems have undergone a merger of mass ratio >1/10, with ~16%, 45%, and 7% of these corresponding respectively to major, minor, and ambiguous `major or minor' mergers. The mean merger rate is a few x 1e-4 Gyr-1 Mpc-3. (2) We compare the empirical merger fraction and rate for high mass galaxies to a suite of Lambda CDM-based models: halo occupation distribution models, semi-analytic models, and hydrodynamic SPH simulations. We find qualitative agreement between observations and models such that the (major+minor) merger fraction or rate from different models bracket the observations, and show a factor of five dispersion. Near-future improvements can now start to rule out certain merger scenarios. (3) Among ~3698 M*>=1e9 Msun galaxies, we find that the mean SFR of visibly merging systems is only modestly enhanced compared to non-interacting galaxies over z~0.24--0.80. Visibly merging systems only account for less than 30% of the cosmic SFR density over T_b~3--7 Gyr. This suggests that the behavior of the cosmic SFR density over the last 7 Gyr is predominantly shaped by non-interacting galaxies.

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arXiv2009

The Effect of Dry Mergers on the Color-Magnitude Relation

We investigate the effect of gas-poor (so-called "dry") mergers on the color-magnitude relation (CMR) of early-type galaxies through a simple toy model and compare with low-z observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The observed red sequence shows a tilt towards bluer colors and a decrease in scatter at the bright end. These characteristics are predicted by our model, based on merger trees from a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. We assume galaxies move onto a "creation red sequence" when they undergo major gas-rich mergers. Subsequent dry mergers move galaxies along the relation by increasing their mass, but also make them slightly bluer. This occurs because bright galaxies are most likely to merge with one of the more numerous fainter and consequently bluer galaxies that lie further down the relation. Bright galaxies undergo a higher fraction of dry mergers than faint galaxies, which causes a change in the slope of the CMR. A more realistic model that includes scatter in the initial relation shows that dry merging causes a tightening of the CMR towards the bright end. The small scatter in the observed CMR thus cannot be used to argue against significant mass growth from dry merging.

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