English

Three Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at $z\sim1.5$: Mergers and Disks on the Main Sequence

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-04-08 v1

Abstract

The main sequence of galaxies, a correlation between the star formation rates and stellar masses of galaxies, has been observed out to z4z\sim4. Galaxies within the scatter of the correlation are typically interpreted to be secularly evolving while galaxies with star formation rates elevated above the main sequence are interpreted to be undergoing interactions or to be Toomre-unstable disks with starbursting clumps. In this paper we investigate the recent merger histories of three dusty star forming galaxies, identified by their bright submillimeter emission at z1.5z\sim1.5. We analyze rest-frame optical and UV imaging, rest-frame optical emission line kinematics using slit spectra obtained with MOSFIRE on Keck I, and calculate Gini and M20_{20} statistics for each galaxy and conclude two are merger-driven while the third is an isolated disk galaxy. The disk galaxy lies \sim4×\times above the main sequence, one merger lies within the scatter of the main sequence, and one merger lies \sim4×\times below the main sequence. This hints that the location of a galaxy with respect to the main sequence may not be a useful discriminator of the recent star formation history of high-M_{\star} galaxies at z1z\sim1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.00016,
  title  = {Three Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at $z\sim1.5$: Mergers and Disks on the Main Sequence},
  author = {Patrick M. Drew and Caitlin M. Casey and Asantha Cooray and Katherine E. Whitaker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.00016},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ