Emission line selected galaxies at $z=0.6-2$ in GOODS South: Stellar masses, SFRs, and large scale structure

Abstract

We have obtained deep NIR narrow and broad (J and Y) band imaging data of the GOODS-South field. The narrow band filter is centered at 1060 nm corresponding to redshifts $z=0.62,1.15,1.85$ for the strong emission lines H$\alpha$, $[$OIII$]$/H$\beta$ and $[$OII$]$, respectively. From those data we extract a well defined sample ($M(AB)=24.8$ in the narrow band) of objects with large emission line equivalent widths in the narrow band. Via SED fits to published broad band data we identify which of the three lines we have detected and assign redshifts accordingly. This results in a well defined, strong emission line selected sample of galaxies down to lower masses than can easily be obtained with only continuum flux limited selection techniques. We compare the (SED fitting-derived) main sequence of star-formation (MS) of our sample to previous works and find that it has a steeper slope than that of samples of more massive galaxies. We conclude that the MS steepens at lower (below $M_{\star }=10^{9.4}{M}_{\odot }$) galaxy masses. We also show that the SFR at any redshift is higher in our sample. We attribute this to the targeted selection of galaxies with large emission line equivalent widths, and conclude that our sample presumably forms the upper boundary of the MS. We briefly investigate and outline how samples with accurate redshifts down to those low stellar masses open a new window to study the formation of large scale structure in the early universe. In particular we report on the detection of a young galaxy cluster at $z=1.85$ which features a central massive galaxy which is the candidate of an early stage cD galaxy, and we identify a likely filament mapped out by $[$OIII$]$ and $H\beta$ emitting galaxies at $z=1.15$.

18 pages, 19 figures, version accepted for publication in A&A

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