Journal article
Massive Dead Galaxies at z ∼ 2 with HST Grism Spectroscopy. I. Star Formation Histories and Metallicity Enrichment
T Morishita, LE Abramson, T Treu, GB Brammer, T Jones, P Kelly, M Stiavelli, M Trenti, B Vulcani, X Wang
Astrophysical Journal | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2019
Abstract
Observations have revealed massive (log M∗/Mo ≳ 11) galaxies that were already dead when the universe was only ∼2 Gyr. Given the short time before these galaxies were quenched, their past histories and quenching mechanism(s) are of particular interest. In this paper, we study star formation histories (SFHs) of 24 massive galaxies at 1.6 < z 50% of their extant masses by ∼1.5 Gyr before the time of observed redshifts, with a trend where more massive galaxies form earlier. Their stellar-phase metallicities are already compatible with those of local early-type galaxies, with a median value of log Z∗/Zo = 0.25 and scatter of ∼0.15 dex. In combination with the reconstructed SFHs, we reveal their ..
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Grants
Awarded by NASA from the Space Telescope Science Institute
Awarded by NASA
Awarded by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous referee for reading the manuscript carefully and providing constructive comments. We thank Marco Chiaberge, Colin Norman, Kartheik Iyer, Sara Ellison, and Susan Kassin for fruitful discussion. We thank Benedikt Diemer for providing star formation histories extracted from the Illustris simulation. We thank Pascal Oesch for providing HDUV data prior to the public release. Support for GLASS (HST-GO-13459) was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. Support for this work is provided by NASA through a Spitzer award issued by JPL/Caltech, HST-AR-13235 and HST-GO-13177. M.T. acknowledges the support provided by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) through project No. CE170100013.