Integral Field spectroscopy of two HI rich E+A galaxies
Abstract
Approximately half of the nearby E+A galaxies followed up with 21-cm observations have detectable HI emission. The optical spectra of these galaxies show strong post-starburst stellar populations but no optical emission lines implying star-formation is not ongoing despite the presence of significant gas reservoirs. We have obtained integral field spectroscopic follow up observations of the two brightest, and nearest, of the six E+A galaxies with HI 21-cm emission in the recent sample of Zwaan et al. (2013). In the central regions of both galaxies the observations are consistent with a post-starburst population with little emission. However, outside the central regions both galaxies have strong optical emission lines, with a clumpy or knot-like distribution, indicating ongoing star-formation. We conclude that in these two cases the presence of optical spectra lacking evidence for star-formation while a large gas mass is present can be explained by an aperture effect in selecting the nearby E+A galaxies using single-fibre spectroscopy that probes only the galaxy core.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.6118,
title = {Integral Field spectroscopy of two HI rich E+A galaxies},
author = {Michael Pracy and Matt Owers and Martin Zwaan and Warrick Couch and Harald Kuntschner and Scott Croom and Elaine Sadler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.6118},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted to MNRAS, 7 pages, 2 figures