paper

Quiescent Galaxies in the 3D-HST Survey: Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Large Number of Galaxies with Relatively Old Stellar Populations at z~2

arXiv:1305.1943 · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/770/2/L39

Abstract

Quiescent galaxies at z~2 have been identified in large numbers based on rest-frame colors, but only a small number of these galaxies have been spectroscopically confirmed to show that their rest-frame optical spectra show either strong Balmer or metal absorption lines. Here, we median stack the rest-frame optical spectra for 171 photometrically-quiescent galaxies at 1.4 < z < 2.2 from the 3D-HST grism survey. In addition to Hbeta (4861A), we unambiguously identify metal absorption lines in the stacked spectrum, including the G-band (4304A), Mg I (5175A), and Na I (5894A). This finding demonstrates that galaxies with relatively old stellar populations already existed when the universe was ~3 Gyr old, and that rest-frame color selection techniques can efficiently select them. We find an average age of 1.3^0.1_0.3 Gyr when fitting a simple stellar population to the entire stack. We confirm our previous result from medium-band photometry that the stellar age varies with the colors of quiescent galaxies: the reddest 80% of galaxies are dominated by metal lines and have a relatively old mean age of 1.6^0.5_0.4 Gyr, whereas the bluest (and brightest) galaxies have strong Balmer lines and a spectroscopic age of 0.9^0.2_0.1 Gyr. Although the spectrum is dominated by an evolved stellar population, we also find [OIII] and Hbeta emission. Interestingly, this emission is more centrally concentrated than the continuum with L_[OIII] = 1.7 +/- 0.3 x 10^40 erg s^-1, indicating residual central star formation or nuclear activity.

6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

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