A Glimpse of the Stellar Populations and Elemental Abundances of Gravitationally Lensed, Quiescent Galaxies at $z\gtrsim 1$ with Keck Deep Spectroscopy

Abstract

Gravitational lenses can magnify distant galaxies, allowing us to discover and characterize the stellar populations of intrinsically faint, quiescent galaxies that are otherwise extremely difficult to directly observe at high redshift from ground-based telescopes. Here, we present the spectral analysis of two lensed, quiescent galaxies at $z\gtrsim 1$ discovered by the ASTRO 3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses survey: AGEL1323 ($M_{\ast }\sim 10^{11.1}{M}_{\odot }$, $z=1.016$, $\mu \sim 14.6$) and AGEL0014 ($M_{\ast }\sim 10^{11.5}{M}_{\odot }$, $z=1.374$, $\mu \sim 4.3$). We measured the age, [Fe/H], and [Mg/Fe] of the two lensed galaxies using deep, rest-frame-optical spectra (S/N $\gtrsim 40$~$\mathring{\mathrm{A}}$${}^{-1}$) obtained on the Keck~I telescope. The ages of AGEL1323 and AGEL0014 are $5.6_{-0.8}^{+0.8}$~Gyr and $3.1_{-0.3}^{+0.8}$~Gyr, respectively, indicating that most of the stars in the galaxies were formed less than 2~Gyr after the Big Bang. Compared to nearby quiescent galaxies of similar masses, the lensed galaxies have lower [Fe/H] and [Mg/H]. Surprisingly, the two galaxies have comparable [Mg/Fe] to similar-mass galaxies at lower redshifts, despite their old ages. Using a simple analytic chemical evolution model connecting the instantaneously recycled element Mg with the mass-loading factors of outflows averaged over the entire star formation history, we found that the lensed galaxies may have experienced enhanced outflows during their star formation compared to lower-redshift galaxies, which may explain why they quenched early.

arXiv comment18 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. The broadband SED fitting and stellar mass measurements updated. A new Section 5.4 is added to discuss the differences between the measured parameters from the SED and full-spectrum fitting

References in corpus (70)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Array Programming with NumPy
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering
• The chemical composition of the Sun
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• Measuring Reddening with SDSS Stellar Spectra and Recalibrating SFD
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The Dust Content and Opacity of Actively Star-Forming Galaxies
• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST). I: Solar-Scaled Models
• dynesty: A Dynamic Nested Sampling Package for Estimating Bayesian Posteriors and Evidences
• Overview of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• The epochs of early-type galaxy formation as a function of environment
• MILES: A Medium resolution INT Library of Empirical Spectra
• The ages and metallicities of galaxies in the local universe
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• The Two Phases of Galaxy Formation
• Inferring the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with BAGPIPES: Evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms
• The Universal Stellar Mass-Stellar Metallicity Relation for Dwarf Galaxies
• Nucleosynthesis Yields of Core-Collapse Supernovae and Hypernovae, and Galactic Chemical Evolution
• Stellar Population Inference with Prospector
• A Bayesian approach to strong lensing modelling of galaxy clusters
• The Origin of the Galaxy Mass-Metallicity Relation and Implications for Galactic Outflows
• The Dark Energy Survey Data Release 1
• The Stellar Initial Mass Function in Early-Type Galaxies From Absorption Line Spectroscopy. II. Results
• The Origin and Evolution of the Galaxy Mass-Metallicity Relation
• Preparing Red-Green-Blue (RGB) Images from CCD Data
• Third Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• The Mass-Concentration-Redshift Relation of Cold and Warm Dark Matter Halos
• How to measure galaxy star-formation histories I: Parametric models
• Nebular Emission Line Ratios in z~2-3 Star-Forming Galaxies with KBSS-MOSFIRE: Exploring the Impact of Ionization, Excitation, and Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Ratio
• How stellar feedback simultaneously regulates star formation and drives outflows
• Charting the evolution of the ages and metallicities of massive galaxies since z=0.7
• Metal-rich, Metal-poor: Updated Stellar Population Models for Old Stellar Systems
• The Assembly Histories of Quiescent Galaxies Since z=0.7 from Absorption Line Spectroscopy
• Velocity Dispersions and Dynamical Masses for a Large Sample of Quiescent Galaxies at z > 1: Improved Measures of the Growth in Mass and Size
• Deep Absorption Line Studies of Quiescent Galaxies at z~2: The Dynamical Mass-Size Relation, and First Constraints on the Fundamental plane
• AutoLens: Automated Modeling of a Strong Lens's Light, Mass and Source
• New Clues on the Calcium Underabundance in Early-Type Galaxies
• A massive, quiescent, population II galaxy at a redshift of 2.1
• The evolution of the mass-metallicity relation in galaxies of different morphological types
• Finding high-redshift strong lenses in DES using convolutional neural networks
• The Extended IRTF Spectral Library: Expanded coverage in metallicity, temperature, and surface gravity
• Adaptive Semi-linear Inversion of Strong Gravitational Lens Imaging
• The Stellar Halos of Massive Elliptical Galaxies II: Detailed Abundance Ratios at Large Radius
• Resolving Quiescent Galaxies at $z\gtrsim 2$: II. Direct Measures of Rotational Support
• PyAutoLens: Open-Source Strong Gravitational Lensing
• A Keck Survey of Gravitationally-Lensed Star-Forming Galaxies: High Spatial Resolution Studies of Kinematics and Metallicity Gradients
• CLEAR I: Ages and Metallicities of Quiescent Galaxies at $1.0<\mathbf{z}<1.8$ Derived from Deep Hubble Space Telescope Grism Data
• Stellar Metallicities and Elemental Abundance Ratios of z~1.4 Massive Quiescent Galaxies
• Abundance patterns in early-type galaxies: is there a 'knee' in the [Fe/H] vs. [alpha/Fe] relation?
• Cold-Mode Accretion: Driving the Fundamental Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• An analytical model for galaxy metallicity: What do metallicity relations tell us about star formation and outflow?
• Signatures of stellar accretion in MaNGA early-type galaxies
• Elemental Abundances and Ages of $z\sim 0.7$ Quiescent Galaxies on the Mass-Size Plane: Implication for Chemical Enrichment and Star-Formation Quenching
• Resolved Multi-element Stellar Chemical Abundances in the Brightest Quiescent Galaxy at z $\sim$ 2
• Old age and super-solar metallicity in a massive z~1.4 early-type galaxy from VLT/X-Shooter spectroscopy
• The stellar metallicities of massive quiescent galaxies at 1.0 < z < 1.3 from KMOS+VANDELS
• The kinematics of massive quiescent galaxies at $1.4<z<2.1$: dark matter fractions, IMF variation, and the relation to local early-type galaxies
• Simultaneous Constraints on the Star Formation History and Nucleosynthesis of Sculptor dSph
• PyAutoFit: A Classy Probabilistic Programming Language for Model Composition and Fitting
• Evolution of the Stellar Mass--Metallicity Relation - I: Galaxies in the z~0.4 Cluster Cl0024
• Evolution of the Stellar Mass-Metallicity Relation. II. Constraints on Galactic Outflows from the Mg Abundances of Quiescent Galaxies
• An exquisitely deep view of quenching galaxies through the gravitational lens: Stellar population, morphology, and ionized gas
• Scaling relations of metallicity, stellar mass, and star formation rate in metal-poor starbursts: II. Theoretical models
• Massive High-Redshift Quiescent Galaxies With JWST
• Metal Deficiency in Two Massive Dead Galaxies at $z\sim 2$
• COOL-LAMPS II. Characterizing the Size and Star Formation History of a Bright Strongly Lensed Early-Type Galaxy at Redshift 1.02

Cited by in corpus (4)

• JWST Reveals Widespread AGN-Driven Neutral Gas Outflows in Massive z ~ 2 Galaxies
• Age and metal gradients in massive quiescent galaxies at $0.6\lesssim z\lesssim 1.0$: implications for quenching and assembly histories
• Ages and metallicities of quiescent galaxies: confronting broadband ($UVJ$) colours with stellar absorption lines
• Simulating continuum-based redshift measurement in the \textit{Roman's} High Latitude Spectroscopy Survey