English

The nature of [S III]{\lambda}{\lambda}9096, 9532 emitters at z = 1.34 and 1.23

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2014-02-18 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

A study of [S III]λλ9096,9532\lambda\lambda9096,9532 emitters at zz = 1.34 and 1.23 is presented using our deep narrow-band H2S1H_2S1 (centered at 2.13 μ\mum) imaging survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS). We combine our data with multi-wavelength data of ECDFS to build up spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from the UU to the KsK_{s}-band for emitter candidates selected with strong excess in H2S1KsH_2S1 - K_{s} and derive photometric redshifts, line luminosities, stellar masses and extinction. A sample of 14 [S III] emitters are identified with H2S1<22.8H_2S1<22.8 and Ks<24.8K_{\rm s}<24.8 (AB) over 381 arcmin2^{2} area, having [S III] line luminosity L[SIII]=1041.542.6L_{[SIII]}= \sim 10^{41.5-42.6}erg s1^{-1}. None of the [S III] emitters is found to have X-ray counterpart in the deepest Chandra 4 Ms observation, suggesting that they are unlikely powered by AGN. HST/ACS F606W and HST/WFC3 F160W images show their rest-frame UV and optical morphologies. About half of the [S III] emitters are mergers and at least one third are disk-type galaxies. Nearly all [S III] emitters exhibit a prominent Balmer break in their SEDs, indicating the presence of a significant post-starburst component. Taken together, our results imply that both shock heating in post-starburst and photoionization caused by young massive stars are likely to excite strong [S III] emission lines. We conclude that the emitters in our sample are dominated by star-forming galaxies with stellar mass 8.7<log(M/Msun)<9.98.7<\log (M/M_{sun})<9.9.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.3600,
  title  = {The nature of [S III]{\lambda}{\lambda}9096, 9532 emitters at z = 1.34 and 1.23},
  author = {F. X. An and X. Z. Zheng and Y. Z. Meng and Y. Chen and Z. Z. Wen and G. L. Lü},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.3600},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, published in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy