Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

The acquisition of deep near-IR imaging with Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope has provided the opportunity to study the very high redshift Universe. For galaxies up to z≈ 7.7 sufficient wavelength coverage exists to probe the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) continuum without contamination from either Lyman α emission or the Lyman α break. In this work we use near-infrared (near-IR) imaging to measure the rest-frame UV continuum colours of galaxies at 4.7 < z < 7.7. We have carefully defined a colour-colour selection to minimize any inherent bias in the measured UV continuum slope for the drop-out samples. For the highest redshift sample (6.7 < z < 7.7), selected as zf850lp-band drop-outs, we find mean UV continuum colours approximately equal to zero (AB), consistent with a dust-free, solar metallicity, star-forming population (or a moderately dusty population of low metallicity). At lower redshift we find that the mean UV continuum colours of galaxies (over the same luminosity range) are redder, and that galaxies with higher luminosities are also slightly redder on average. One interpretation of this is that lower redshift and more luminous galaxies are dustier; however, this interpretation is complicated by the effects of the star formation history and metallicity and potentially the initial mass function on the UV continuum colours. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.

Abstract:

Using extremely deep PACS 100-and 160 μm Herschel data from the GOODS-Herschel program, we identify 21 infrared bright galaxies previously missed in the deepest 24 μm surveys performed by Spitzer/MIPS. These MIPS dropouts are predominantly found in two redshift bins, centred at z ∼ 0.4 and ∼1.3. Their S100/S24 flux density ratios are similar to those of local (ultra-) luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs and ULIRGs), whose silicate absorption features at 18 μm (at z ∼ 0.4) and 9.7 μm (at z ∼ 1.3) are shifted into the 24 μm MIPS band at these redshifts. The high-z sub-sample consists of 11 infrared luminous sources, accounting for ∼2% of the whole GOODS-Herschel sample and putting strong upper limits on the fraction of LIRGs/ULIRGs at 1.0 < z < 1.7 that are missed by the 24 μm surveys. We find that a S100/S24 > 43 colour cut selects galaxies with a redshift distribution similar to that of the MIPS dropouts and when combined with a second colour cut, S 16/S8 > 4, isolates sources at 1.0 < z < 1.7. We show that these sources have elevated specific star formation rates (sSFR) compared to main sequence galaxies at these redshifts and are likely to be compact starbursts with moderate/strong 9.7 μm silicate absorption features in their mid-IR spectra. Herschel data reveal that their infrared luminosities extrapolated from the 24 μm flux density are underestimated, on average, by a factor of ∼3. These silicate break galaxies account for 16% (8%) of the ULIRG (LIRG) population in the GOODS fields, indicating a lower limit in their space density of 2.0 × 10-5 Mpc-3. Finally, we provide estimates of the fraction of z < 2 MIPS dropout sources as a function of the 24-, 100-, 160-, 250-and 350 μm sensitivity limits, and conclude that previous predictions of a population of silicate break galaxies missed by the major 24 μm extragalactic surveys have beenoverestimated. © 2011 ESO.