J/MNRAS/490/3309 Massive passive galaxies at the Cosmic Dawn (Merlin+, 2019)
Red and dead CANDELS: massive passive galaxies at the dawn of the Universe.
Merlin E., Fortuni F., Torelli M., Santini P., Castellano M., Fontana A.,
Grazian A., Pentericci L., Pilo S., Schmidt K.B.
<Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 490, 3309-3328 (2019)>
=2019MNRAS.490.3309M 2019MNRAS.490.3309M (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Galaxies ; Redshifts ; Photometry, infrared
Keywords: Galaxies - Galaxies:evolution - Galaxies:high-redshift -
Galaxies: photometry - methods: data analysis
Abstract:
We search the five CANDELS fields (COSMOS, EGS, GOODS-North,
GOODS-South, and UDS) for passively evolving a.k.a. 'red and dead'
massive galaxies in the first 2Gyr after the big bang, integrating and
updating the work on GOODS-South presented in a previous paper. We
perform SED-fitting on photometric data, with top-hat star-formation
histories to model an early and abrupt quenching, and using a
probabilistic approach to select only robust candidates. Using
libraries without (with) spectral lines emission, starting from a
total of more than 20000 z>3 sources we end up with 102 (40)
candidates, including one at z=6.7. This implies a minimal number
density of 1.73±0.17x10-5 (6.69±1.08x10-6)Mpc-3 for 3<z<5;
applying a correction factor to account for incompleteness yields
2.30±0.20x10-5. We compare these values with those from five
recent hydrodynamical cosmological simulations, finding a reasonable
agreement at z<4; tensions arise at earlier epochs. Finally, we use
the star-formation histories from the best-fitting models to estimate
the contribution of the high-redshift passive galaxies to the global
star formation rate density during their phase of activity, finding
that they account for ∼5-10 per cent of the total star formation at
3<z<8, despite being only ∼0.5 per cent of the total in number. The
resulting picture is that early and strong star formation activity,
building massive galaxies on short time-scales and followed by a quick
and abrupt quenching, is a rare but crucial phenomenon in the early
Universe: the evolution of the cosmos must be heavily influenced by
the short but powerful activity of these pristine monsters.
Description:
For the GOODS-South field we the 19 bands catalogue already discussed
in Merlin et al. (2018MNRAS.473.2098M 2018MNRAS.473.2098M) (M18), which improves on the
original catalogue published by Guo et al. (2013ApJS..207...24G 2013ApJS..207...24G, Cat.
J/ApJS/207/24).
For the remaining four fields, we exploited the published CANDELS
photometric catalogues, released in 2015 and presented in Nayyeri et
al. (2017ApJS..228....7N 2017ApJS..228....7N, Cat. J/ApJS/228/7), Stefanon et al.
(2017ApJS..229...32S 2017ApJS..229...32S, Cat. J/ApJS/229/32), Barro et al.
(2019ApJS..243...22B 2019ApJS..243...22B), and Galametz et al. (2013ApJS..206...10G 2013ApJS..206...10G, Cat.
J/ApJS/206/10) for COSMOS, EGS, GOODS-North, and UDS, respectively.
As for the redshifts, we took advantage of the latest CANDELS
estimates, to be presented in Kodra et al. (in preparation) which
improve upon the original Dahlen et al. (2013ApJ...775...93D 2013ApJ...775...93D)
estimates; the new photo-z's (where spec-z's are not available) are
obtained combining four independent estimations, using the minimum
Frechet distance combination method.
The main physical properties of the 102 red and dead candidates, as
obtained in the SED-fitting procedure with the top-hat library (see
Appendix A), are given in Table B1.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
tableb1.dat 79 102 Physical properties of the selected sample of
red and dead candidates
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See also:
J/ApJS/207/24 : GOODS-S CANDELS multiwavelength catalog (Guo+, 2013)
J/ApJS/228/7 : Multi-wavelength data in CANDELS COSMOS field (Nayyeri+, 2017)
J/ApJS/229/32 : CANDELS: multiwavelength catalogs in the EGS (Stefanon+, 2017)
J/ApJS/206/10 : CANDELS multiwavelength catalog (Galametz+, 2013)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tableb1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 12 A12 --- ID Object identification in the CANDELS
catalogues (COSMOS, EGS, GOODS-N, GOODS-S
and UDS) (1)
14 A1 --- f_ID [*] Flag on ID (2)
16- 23 F8.4 deg RAdeg Right ascension (J2000)
25- 32 F8.4 deg DEdeg Declination (J2000)
34- 37 F4.2 --- zCAND Official CANDELS redshift
39 A1 --- f_zCAND [*] Flag on zCAND (3)
41- 44 F4.2 Gyr Age Time span from the onset of the star
formation activity to the epoch of
observation
46- 49 F4.2 Gyr E_Age Upper error on Age
51- 54 F4.2 Gyr e_Age Lower error on Age
56- 61 F6.2 10+9Msun Mass Stellar mass assuming a Salpeter
(1959ApJ...129..608S 1959ApJ...129..608S) initial mass function
63- 68 F6.2 10+9Msun E_Mass Upper error on Mass
70- 75 F6.2 10+9Msun e_Mass Lower error on Mass
77- 79 F3.1 Gyr Dtburst Duration of the star formation activity,
during which the SFR is constant
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Note (1): Names identified in Simbad as:
COSMOS-NNNNN = [NHM2017] NNNNN
EGS-NNNNN = [SYM2017] NNNNN
UDS-NNNNN = [GGF2013] NNNNN
Note (2): Flag as follows:
* = Candidate for which nebular emission lines were included in the
SED-fitting using ZPHOT (Fontana et al. 2000AJ....120.2206F 2000AJ....120.2206F,
Cat. J/AJ/120/2206) (40/102)
Note (3): Flag as follows:
* = COSMOS-16676 (Z-FOURGE source 20115) properties have been obtained
fitting at zspec=3.72 (Glazebrook et al. 2017Natur.544...71G 2017Natur.544...71G)
rather than at zCANDELS=4.13, which would yield:
Age=0.65+0.65-0.35, Mass=362.20+231.10-178.10, Dtburst=0.3
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Ana Fiallos [CDS] 31-Jan-2023