A Deep Multicolor Survey. VII. Extremely Red Objects and Galaxy Formation

Abstract

Extremely Red Objects (EROs) offer a window to the universe at z~1 analogous to that provided by the Lyman Break galaxies at z=3. Passive evolution and hierarchical galaxy formation models make very distinct predictions for the K (2.2um) surface density of galaxies at z~1 and EROs are a powerful constraint on these theories. I present a study of nine resolved EROs with R-K>5.3 and K<18 mag found in the 185 arcmin^2 of the Deep Multicolor Survey with near-infrared imaging. Photometric redshifts for these galaxies shows they all lie at z=0.8-1.3. The relatively blue J-K colors of these galaxies suggest that most are old ellipticals, rather than dusty starbursts. The surface density of EROs in this survey (>0.05 arcmin^-2), which is a lower limit to the total z~1 galaxy surface density, is an order of magnitude below the prediction of passive galaxy evolution, yet over a factor of two higher than the hierarchical galaxy formation prediction for a flat, matter-dominated universe. A flat, Lambda-dominated universe may bring the hierarchical galaxy formation model into agreement with the observed ERO surface density.

AJ Accepted (May 2001). 16 pages with 2 embedded figures

References in corpus (8)

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• The Masses, Ancestors and Descendents of Extremely Red Objects: Constraints from Spatial Clustering
• The Chandra Deep Field North Survey. X. X-ray Emission from Very Red Objects
• The Las Campanas Infrared Survey. III. The H-band Imaging Survey and the Near-Infrared and Optical Photometric Catalogs
• The Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS) - V. The evolution of the rest-frame K-band and J-band galaxy luminosity functions to z ~ 0.7
• Massive z ~ 1.3 evolved galaxies revealed
• The Subillimeter Properties of Extremely Red Objects in the CUDSS Fields
• J and H-band Imaging of AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Survey Field
• The Phoenix Deep Survey: the clustering and the environment of Extremely Red Objects
• Number Counts of Bright Extremely Red Objects: Evolved Massive Galaxies at z~1
• Galaxy morphology and evolution from SWAN Adaptive Optics imaging
• The Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS) - IX. Galaxy Evolution to z ~ 2 From Optically Selected Catalogues
• Galaxies in Southern Bright Star Fields I. Near-infrared imaging