Early-type galaxies at intermediate redshift observed with HST WFC3: perspectives on recent star-formation

Abstract

We present an analysis of the stellar populations of 102 visually-selected early-type galaxies (ETGs) with spectroscopic redshifts (0.3<z<1.5) from observations in the Early Release Science program with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on {\it Hubble Space Telescope} (HST). We fit one- and two-component synthetic stellar models to the ETGs UV-optical-near-IR spectral energy distributions and find a large fraction (~40%) are likely to have experienced a minor (f$\lesssim$10% of stellar mass) burst of recent (t$\lesssim$1 Gyr) star-formation. The measured ages and mass fraction of the young stellar populations do not strongly trend with measurements of galaxy morphology. We note that massive (log(M[$M_{\odot }$])>10.5) recently star-forming ETGs appear to have larger sizes. Furthermore, high-mass, quiescent ETGs identified with likely companions populate a distinct region in the size-mass parameter space, in comparison with the distribution of massive ETGs with evidence of RSF. We conclude that both mechanisms of the quenching of star-formation in disk-like ETGs and (gas-rich, minor) merger activity contribute to the formation of young stars and the size-mass evolution of intermediate redshift ETGs. The number of ETGs for which we have both HST WFC3 panchromatic (especially UV) imaging and spectroscopically-confirmed redshifts is relatively small, therefore a conclusion on the relative roles of both of these mechanisms remains an open question.

Accepted for publication in ApJ

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