Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. II. Stellar content of quiescent galaxies within the dust-corrected stellar mass$-$colour and the $UVJ$ colour$-$colour diagrams

Abstract

Our aim is to determine the distribution of stellar population parameters (extinction, age, metallicity, and star formation rate) of quiescent galaxies within the rest-frame stellar mass$-$colour and $UVJ$ colour$-$colour diagrams corrected for extinction up to $z\sim 1$. These novel diagrams reduce the contamination in samples of quiescent galaxies owing to dust-reddened galaxies, and they provide useful constraints on stellar population parameters. We set constraints on the stellar population parameters of quiescent galaxies combining the ALHAMBRA multi-filter photo-spectra with our SED-fitting code MUFFIT, making use of composite stellar population models. The extinction obtained by MUFFIT allowed us to remove dusty star-forming (DSF) galaxies from the sample of red $UVJ$ galaxies. The distributions of stellar population parameters across these rest-frame diagrams are revealed after the dust correction and are fitted by the LOESS method to reduce uncertainty effects. Quiescent galaxy samples defined via classical $UVJ$ diagrams are typically contaminated by a $\sim 20$% fraction of DSF galaxies. A significant part of the galaxies in the green valley are actually obscured star-forming galaxies ($\sim 30-65$%). Consequently, the transition of galaxies from the blue cloud to the red sequence, and hence the related mechanisms for quenching, seems to be much more efficient and faster than previously reported. The rest-frame stellar mass$-$colour and $UVJ$ colour$-$colour diagrams are useful for constraining the age, metallicity, extinction, and star formation rate of quiescent galaxies by only their redshift, rest-frame colours, and/or stellar mass. Dust correction plays an important role in understanding how quiescent galaxies are distributed in these diagrams and is key to performing a pure selection of quiescent galaxies via intrinsic colours.

arXiv comment(37 pages, 29 figures, accepted for publication in A&A)

References in corpus (77)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• Correcting for the Effects of Interstellar Extinction
• Evolutionary tracks and isochrones for low- and intermediate-mass stars: from 0.15 to 7 M_sun, and from Z=0.0004 to 0.03
• The broken hierarchy of galaxy formation
• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z=1.1 : The Dominance of Gradually Declining Star Formation, and the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies
• New Insight on Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Keck Spectroscopy of the Hawaii Deep Fields
• The reversal of the star formation-density relation in the distant universe
• Multiwavelength study of massive galaxies at z~2. I. Star formation and galaxy growth
• Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
• A large stellar evolution database for population synthesis studies. I. Scaled solar models and isochrones
• The Dependence of Star Formation History and Internal Structure on Stellar Mass for 10^5 Low-Redshift Galaxies
• The Star Formation History of Field Galaxies
• Nearly 5000 Distant Early-Type Galaxies in COMBO-17: a Red Sequence and its Evolution since z~1
• Galaxy Luminosity Functions to z~1: DEEP2 vs. COMBO-17 and Implications for Red Galaxy Formation
• Mass assembly in quiescent and star-forming galaxies since z=4 from UltraVISTA
• The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators
• Detection of quiescent galaxies in a bicolor sequence from z=0-2
• The Infrared Spectral Energy Distribution of Normal Star-Forming Galaxies: Calibration at Far-Infrared and Submillimeter Wavelengths
• Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment
• Evolutionary Stellar Population Synthesis with MILES. Part I: The Base Models and a New Line Index System
• The First Release COSMOS Optical and Near-IR Data and Catalog
• Observational evidence for AGN feedback in early-type galaxies
• The Green Valley is a Red Herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early- and late-type galaxies
• The Atlas3D project - XX. Mass-size and mass-sigma distributions of early-type galaxies: bulge fraction drives kinematics, mass-to-light ratio, molecular gas fraction and stellar initial mass function
• Galaxy Stellar Mass Assembly between 0.2<z<2 from the S-COSMOS survey
• A new photometric technique for the joint selection of star-forming and passive galaxies at 1.4<z<2.5
• The Spitzer Legacy Survey of the HST-ACS 2 sq. deg. COSMOS Field: survey strategy and first analysis
• Strangulation as the primary mechanism for shutting down star formation in galaxies
• The All-wavelength Extended Groth Strip International Survey (AEGIS) Data Sets
• Direct cosmological simulations of the growth of black holes and galaxies
• PRIMUS: Constraints on Star Formation Quenching and Galaxy Merging, and the Evolution of the Stellar Mass Function From z=0-1
• UV-extended E-MILES stellar population models: young components in massive early-type galaxies
• Host galaxies, clustering, Eddington ratios, and evolution of radio, X-ray, and infrared-selected AGNs
• Towards an understanding of the rapid decline of the cosmic star formation rate
• The Atlas3D Project - XXX. Star formation histories and stellar population scaling relations of early-type galaxies
• Weak Gravitational Lensing with COSMOS: Galaxy Selection and Shape Measurements
• The UV-optical Galaxy Color-Magnitude Diagram I: Basic Properties
• A library of high resolution synthetic stellar spectra from 300nm to 1.8 micron with solar and alpha-enhanced composition
• Ages and metallicities of early-type galaxies in the SDSS: new insight into the physical origin of the colour-magnitude and the Mg2-sigmaV relations
• The Evolving Luminosity Function of Red Galaxies
• MIUSCAT: extended MILES spectral coverage. I. Stellar populations synthesis models
• AEGIS: The color-magnitude relation for X-ray selected AGN
• Deep Spitzer 24mic COSMOS imaging -- I. The evolution of luminous dusty galaxies - Confronting the models
• The star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Radial structures
• Encoding the infrared excess (IRX) in the NUVrK color diagram for star-forming galaxies
• Empirical calibration of the near-IR CaII triplet - IV. The stellar population synthesis models
• Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances. I. Optimization of a Maximum Likelihood Algorithm
• The ALHAMBRA Project: A large area multi medium-band optical and NIR photometric survey
• An Integrated Picture of Star Formation, Metallicity Evolution, and Galactic Stellar Mass Assembly
• Stellar populations from spectroscopy of a large sample of quiescent galaxies at z > 1: Measuring the contribution of progenitor bias to early size growth
• Insights on the stellar mass-metallicity relation from the CALIFA survey
• A maximum likelihood method for fitting colour-magnitude diagrams
• AEGIS: New Evidence Linking Active Galactic Nuclei to the Quenching of Star Formation
• The ALHAMBRA Survey: Bayesian Photometric Redshifts with 23 bands for 3 squared degrees
• Spot the difference. Impact of different selection criteria on observed properties of passive galaxies in zCOSMOS 20-k sample
• The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): A quiescent formation of massive red-sequence galaxies over the past 9 Gyr
• The ages, metallicities and star formation histories of early-type galaxies in SDSS
• The Evolution of the Fractions of Quiescent and Star-forming Galaxies as a Function of Stellar Mass Since z=3: Increasing Importance of Massive, Dusty Star-forming Galaxies in the Early Universe
• The Age Spread of Quiescent Galaxies with the NEWFIRM Medium-band Survey: Identification of the Oldest Galaxies out to z~2
• The Relation between Galaxy Structure and Spectral Type: Implications for the Buildup of the Quiescent Galaxy Population at 0.5<z<2.0
• The evolution of quiescent galaxies at high redshift (z > 1.4)
• MIUSCAT: extended MILES spectral coverage. II. Constraints from optical photometry
• Stellar population synthesis models between 2.5 and 5 μm based on the empirical IRTF stellar library
• AGN-Host Galaxy Connection: Morphology and Colours of X-ray Selected AGN at z < 2
• Star formation of far-IR AGN and non-AGN galaxies in the green valley: possible implication of AGN positive feedback
• Near-IR Galaxy Counts and Evolution from the Wide-Field ALHAMBRA survey
• Pathways to quiescence: SHARDS view on the Star Formation Histories of massive quiescent galaxies at 1.0 < z < 1.5
• The ALHAMBRA survey: reliable morphological catalogue of 22,051 early- and late-type galaxies
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. IV. Properties of quiescent galaxies on the stellar mass$-$size plane
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. I. MUFFIT: A Multi-Filter Fitting code for stellar population diagnostics
• The ALHAMBRA survey: an empirical estimation of the cosmic variance for merger fraction studies based on close pairs
• Unbinned maximum-likelihood estimators for low-count data: Applications to faint X-ray spectra in the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. III. The stellar content of the quiescent galaxy population during the last $8$ Gyr

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program: A Mass-Dependent Slope of the Galaxy Size-Mass Relation at $z<1$
• The miniJPAS survey: star-galaxy classification using machine learning
• The miniJPAS survey: Identification and characterization of galaxy populations with the J-PAS photometric system
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. IV. Properties of quiescent galaxies on the stellar mass$-$size plane
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. III. The stellar content of the quiescent galaxy population during the last $8$ Gyr