ZFIRE: A KECK/MOSFIRE Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies in Rich Environments at z~2

Themiya Nanayakkara; Karl Glazebrook; Glenn G. Kacprzak; Tiantian Yuan; Kim-Vy Tran; Lee Spitler; Lisa Kewley; Caroline Straatman; Michael Cowley; David Fisher; Ivo Labbe; Adam Tomczak; Rebecca Allen; Leo Alcorn

doi:10.3847/0004-637X/828/1/21

paper

ZFIRE: A KECK/MOSFIRE Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies in Rich Environments at z~2

arXiv:1607.00013 · doi:10.3847/0004-637X/828/1/21

Abstract

We present an overview and the first data release of ZFIRE, a spectroscopic redshift survey of star-forming galaxies that utilizes the MOSFIRE instrument on Keck-I to study galaxy properties in rich environments at $1.5 < z < 2.5$ . ZFIRE measures accurate spectroscopic redshifts and basic galaxy properties derived from multiple emission lines. The galaxies are selected from a stellar mass limited sample based on deep near infra-red imaging ( $K_{AB} < 25$ ) and precise photometric redshifts from the ZFOURGE and UKIDSS surveys as well as grism redshifts from 3DHST. Between 2013--2015 ZFIRE has observed the COSMOS and UDS legacy fields over 13 nights and has obtained 211 galaxy redshifts over $1.57 < z < 2.66$ from a combination of nebular emission lines (such as \Halpha, \NII, \Hbeta, \OII, \OIII, \SII) observed at 1--2\micron. Based on our medium-band NIR photometry, we are able to spectrophotometrically flux calibrate our spectra to \around10\% accuracy. ZFIRE reaches $5 σ$ emission line flux limits of \around $3 \times 1 0^{- 18} erg/s/c m^{2}$ with a resolving power of $R = 3500$ and reaches masses down to \around10 $^{9}$ \msol. We confirm that the primary input survey, ZFOURGE, has produced photometric redshifts for star-forming galaxies (including highly attenuated ones) accurate to $Δ z / (1 + z_{spec}) = 0.015$ with $0.7%$ outliers. We measure a slight redshift bias of $< 0.001$ , and we note that the redshift bias tends to be larger at higher masses. We also examine the role of redshift on the derivation of rest-frame colours and stellar population parameters from SED fitting techniques. The ZFIRE survey extends spectroscopically-confirmed $z \sim 2$ samples across a richer range of environments, here we make available the first public release of the data for use by the community.\footnote{\url{http://zfire.swinburne.edu.au}}

arXiv commentPublished in ApJ. Data available at http://zfire.swinburne.edu.au, Code for figures at https://github.com/themiyan/zfire_survey, 31 pages, 24 figures

ZFIRE: A KECK/MOSFIRE Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies in Rich Environments at z~2

Abstract

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