Abstract
Detections and non-detections of Lyman alpha (Lyα) emission from z > 6 galaxies (<1 Gyr after the big bang) can be used to measure the timeline of cosmic reionization. Of key interest to ...measuring reionization’s mid-stages, but also increasing observational challenge, are observations at z > 7, where Lyα redshifts to near infra-red wavelengths. Here we present a search for z > 7.2 Lyα emission in 53 intrinsically faint Lyman Break Galaxy candidates, gravitationally lensed by massive galaxy clusters, in the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (KLASS). With integration times of ∼7–10 h, we detect no Lyα emission with signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) > 5 in our sample. We determine our observations to be 80 per cent complete for 5σ spatially and spectrally unresolved emission lines with integrated line flux >5.7 × 10−18 erg s−1 cm−2. We define a photometrically selected sub-sample of 29 targets at z = 7.9 ± 0.6, with a median 5σ Lyα EW limit of 58 Å. We perform a Bayesian inference of the average intergalactic medium (IGM) neutral hydrogen fraction using their spectra. Our inference accounts for the wavelength sensitivity and incomplete redshift coverage of our observations, and the photometric redshift probability distribution of each target. These observations, combined with samples from the literature, enable us to place a lower limit on the average IGM neutral hydrogen fraction of $\gt 0.76 \,\, (68{{\ \rm per\ cent}}), \,\, \gt 0.46 \,\, (95{{\ \rm per\ cent}})$ at z ∼ 8, providing further evidence of rapid reionization at z ∼ 6–8. We show that this is consistent with reionization history models extending the galaxy luminosity function to $M_ \rm {\small UV}\lesssim -12$, with low ionizing photon escape fractions, $f_\textrm{esc} \lesssim 15{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$.
We investigate the intracluster light (ICL) in the six Hubble Frontier Field clusters at 0.3 < z < 0.6 . We employ a new method, which is free from any functional form of the ICL profile, and exploit ...the unprecedented depth of this Hubble Space Telescope imaging to map the ICL's diffuse light out to clustrocentric radii R ∼ 300 kpc ( ICL ∼ 27 mag arcsec−2). From these maps, we construct radial color and stellar mass profiles via SED fitting and find clear negative color gradients in all systems with increasing distance from the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). While this implies older/more metal-rich stellar components in the inner part of the ICL, we find that the ICL mostly consists of a 2 Gyr population, and plausibly originated with log M * M 10 cluster galaxies. Furthermore, we find that 10%-15% of the ICL's mass at large radii ( 150 kpc) lies in a younger/bluer stellar population (∼1 Gyr), a phenomenon not seen in local samples. We attribute this light to the higher fraction of star-forming/(post-)starburst galaxies in clusters at z ∼ 0.5 . Ultimately, we find the ICL's total mass to be log M * ICL M ∼ 11 -12, constituting 5%-20% of the clusters' total stellar mass, or about half of the value at z ∼ 0 . The above implies distinct formation histories for the ICL and BCGs/other massive cluster galaxies; i.e., the ICL at this epoch is still being constructed rapidly ( ∼ 40 M yr−1), while the BCGs have mostly completed their evolution. To be consistent with the ICL measurements of local massive clusters, such as Virgo, our data suggest mass acquisition mainly from quiescent cluster galaxies is the principal source of ICL material in the subsequent ∼5 Gyr of cosmic time.
Context.
Spectroscopic surveys of massive galaxy clusters reveal the properties of faint background galaxies thanks to the magnification provided by strong gravitational lensing.
Aims.
We present a ...systematic analysis of integral-field-spectroscopy observations of 12 massive clusters, conducted with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). All data were taken under very good seeing conditions (∼0″.6) in effective exposure times between two and 15 h per pointing, for a total of 125 h. Our observations cover a total solid angle of ∼23 arcmin
2
in the direction of clusters, many of which were previously studied by the MAssive Clusters Survey, Frontier Fields (FFs), Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space and Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with
Hubble
programmes. The achieved emission line detection limit at 5
σ
for a point source varies between (0.77–1.5) × 10
−18
erg s
−1
cm
−2
at 7000 Å.
Methods.
We present our developed strategy to reduce these observational data, detect continuum sources and line emitters in the datacubes, and determine their redshifts. We constructed robust mass models for each cluster to further confirm our redshift measurements using strong-lensing constraints, and identified a total of 312 strongly lensed sources producing 939 multiple images.
Results.
The final redshift catalogues contain more than 3300 robust redshifts, of which 40% are for cluster members and ∼30% are for lensed Lyman-
α
emitters. Fourteen percent of all sources are line emitters that are not seen in the available HST images, even at the depth of the FFs (∼29 AB). We find that the magnification distribution of the lensed sources in the high-magnification regime (
μ
= 2–25) follows the theoretical expectation of
N
(
z
) ∝
μ
−2
. The quality of this dataset, number of lensed sources, and number of strong-lensing constraints enables detailed studies of the physical properties of both the lensing cluster and the background galaxies. The full data products from this work, including the datacubes, catalogues, extracted spectra, ancillary images, and mass models, are made available to the community.
Abstract
The past decade has seen impressive progress in the detection of
z
> 7 galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope; however, little is known about their properties. The James Webb Space ...Telescope will revolutionize the high-
z
field by providing near-IR (i.e., rest-frame optical) data of unprecedented depth and spatial resolution. Measuring galaxy quantities such as resolved stellar ages or gas metallicity gradients traditionally requires spectroscopy, as broadband imaging filters are generally too coarse to fully isolate diagnostics such as the 4000 Å (rest-frame) break, continuum emission from aged stars, and key emission lines (e.g., O
ii
, O
iii
, H
β
). However, in this paper, we show that adding NIRCam images through a strategically chosen medium-band filter to common wide-band filter sets adopted by ERS and GTO programs delivers tighter constraints on these galactic properties. To constrain the choice of filter, we perform a systematic investigation of which combinations of wide-band filters from ERS and GTO programs and single medium-band filters offer the tightest constraints on several galaxy properties at redshifts
z
∼ 7–11. We employ the JAGUAR extragalactic catalogs to construct statistical samples of physically motivated mock photometry and conduct SED-fitting procedures to evaluate the accuracy of galaxy property (and photo-
z
) recovery with a simple star formation history model. We find that adding >4.1
μ
m medium filters at comparable depth to the broadband filters can significantly improve photo-
z
s and yield close to order-of-magnitude improvements in the determination of quantities such as stellar ages, metallicities, SF-related quantities, and emission-line fluxes at
z
∼ 8. For resolved sources, the proposed approach enables the spatially resolved determination of these quantities that would be prohibitive with slit spectroscopy.
Abstract
We present a strong lensing analysis on the massive cluster Abell 370 (A370; z = 0.375), using a combination of deep multiband Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging and Multi-Unit ...Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) spectroscopy. From only 2 h of the MUSE data, we are able to measure 120 redshifts in the southern BCG area, including several multiply imaged lens systems. In total, we increase the number of multiply imaged systems with a secure redshift from 4 to 15, nine of which are newly discovered. Of these, eight are located at z > 3, greatly extending the redshift range of spectroscopically confirmed systems over previous work. Using these systems as constraints, we update a parametric lens model of A370, probing the mass distribution from cluster to galaxy scales. Overall, we find that a model with only two cluster-scale dark matter haloes (one for each BCG) does a poor job of fitting these new image constraints. Instead, two additional mass clumps – a central ‘bar’ of mass located between the BCGs, and another clump located within a ‘crown’ of galaxies in the northern part of the cluster field – provide significant improvements to the fit. Additional physical evidence suggests these clumps are indeed real features of the system, but with relatively few image constraints in the crown region, this claim is difficult to evaluate from a modelling perspective. Additional MUSE observations of A370 covering the entire strong-lensing region will greatly help these efforts, further improving our understanding of this intriguing cluster.
We report the first measurements with sub-kiloparsec spatial resolution of strongly inverted gas-phase metallicity gradients in two dwarf galaxies at z ∼ 2. The galaxies have stellar masses ∼109 , ...specific star formation rate ∼20 Gyr−1, and global metallicity (1/4 solar), assuming the strong-line calibrations of O iii/Hβ and O ii/Hβ from Maiolino et al. Their radial metallicity gradients are measured to be highly inverted, i.e., 0.122 0.008 and 0.111 0.017 dex kpc−1, which is hitherto unseen at such small masses in similar redshift ranges. From the Hubble Space Telescope observations of the source nebular emission and stellar continuum, we present two-dimensional spatial maps of star formation rate surface density, stellar population age, and gas fraction, which show that our galaxies are currently undergoing rapid mass assembly via disk inside-out growth. More importantly, using a simple chemical evolution model, we find that the gas fractions for different metallicity regions cannot be explained by pure gas accretion. Our spatially resolved analysis based on a more advanced gas regulator model results in a spatial map of net gaseous outflows, triggered by active central starbursts, that potentially play a significant role in shaping the spatial distribution of metallicity by effectively transporting stellar nucleosynthesis yields outwards. The relation between wind mass loading factors and stellar surface densities measured in different regions of our galaxies shows that a single type of wind mechanism, driven by either energy or momentum conservation, cannot explain the entire galaxy. These sources present a unique constraint on the effects of gas flows on the early phase of disk growth from the perspective of spatially resolved chemical evolution within individual systems.
We present the hitherto largest sample of gas-phase metallicity radial gradients measured at sub-kpc resolution in star-forming galaxies in the redshift range of z 1.2, 2.3. These measurements are ...enabled by the synergy of slitless spectroscopy from the Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared channels and the lensing magnification from foreground galaxy clusters. Our sample consists of 76 galaxies with stellar mass ranging from 107 to 1010 , an instantaneous star formation rate in the range of 1, 100 yr−1, and global metallicity of solar. At a 2 confidence level, 15/76 galaxies in our sample show negative radial gradients, whereas 7/76 show inverted gradients. Combining ours and all other metallicity gradients obtained at a similar resolution currently available in the literature, we measure a negative mass dependence of Δlog(O/H)/ = (−0.020 0.007) + (−0.016 0.008) , with the intrinsic scatter being = 0.060 0.006 over 4 orders of magnitude in stellar mass. Our result is consistent with strong feedback, not secular processes, being the primary governor of the chemostructural evolution of star-forming galaxies during the disk mass assembly at cosmic noon. We also find that the intrinsic scatter of metallicity gradients increases with decreasing stellar mass and increasing specific star formation rate. This increase in the intrinsic scatter is likely caused by the combined effect of cold-mode gas accretion and merger-induced starbursts, with the latter more predominant in the dwarf mass regime of .
ABSTRACT
Using the MEGAFLOW survey, which consists of a combination of MUSE and UVES observations of 22 quasar fields selected to contain strong Mg ii absorbers, we measure the covering fractions of ...C iv and Mg ii as a function of impact parameter b using a novel Bayesian logistic regression method on unbinned data, appropriate for small samples. We also analyse how the C iv and Mg ii covering fractions evolve with redshift. In the MUSE data, we found 215 $z = 1{-}1.5$ O ii emitters with fluxes ${\gt}10^{-17}$ erg s−1 cm−2 and within 250 kpc of quasar sight-lines. Over this redshift path $z = 1{-}1.5$, we have 19 (32) C iv (Mg ii) absorption systems with rest-frame equivalent width (REW) $W_r\gt $ 0.05 Å associated with at least one O ii emitter. The covering fractions of $z\approx 1.2$ C iv (Mg ii) absorbers with mean $W_r\approx$ 0.7 Å (1.0 Å), exceeds 50 per cent within 23$^{+62}_{-16}$ (46$^{+{18}}_{-13}$) kpc. Together with published studies, our results suggest that the covering fraction of C iv (Mg ii) becomes larger (smaller) with time, respectively. For absorption systems that have C iv but not Mg ii, we find in 73 per cent of the cases no O ii counterpart. This may indicate that C iv comes from the intergalactic medium (IGM), i.e. beyond 250 kpc, or that it is associated with lower mass or quiescent galaxies.
We combine deep Hubble Space Telescope grism spectroscopy with a new Bayesian method to derive maps of gas-phase metallicity for 10 star-forming galaxies at high redshift ( ). Exploiting lensing ...magnification by the foreground cluster MACS1149.6+2223, we reach sub-kiloparsec spatial resolution and push the limit of stellar mass associated with such high-z spatially resolved measurements below for the first time. Our maps exhibit diverse morphologies, indicative of various effects such as efficient radial mixing from tidal torques, rapid accretion of low-metallicity gas, and other physical processes that can affect the gas and metallicity distributions in individual galaxies. Based upon an exhaustive sample of all existing sub-kiloparesec resolution metallicity gradient measurements at high z, we find that predictions given by analytical chemical evolution models assuming a relatively extended star-formation profile in the early disk-formation phase can explain the majority of observed metallicity gradients, without involving galactic feedback or radial outflows. We observe a tentative correlation between stellar mass and metallicity gradients, consistent with the "downsizing" galaxy formation picture that more massive galaxies are more evolved into a later phase of disk growth, where they experience more coherent mass assembly at all radii and thus show shallower metallicity gradients. In addition to the spatially resolved analysis, we compile a sample of homogeneously cross-calibrated integrated metallicity measurements spanning three orders of magnitude in stellar mass at z ∼ 1.8. We use this sample to study the mass-metallicity relation (MZR) and find that the slope of the observed MZR can rule out the momentum-driven wind model at a 3 confidence level.
We present an updated strong-lensing analysis of the massive cluster Abell 370 (A370), continuing the work first presented in L17. In this new analysis, we take advantage of the deeper imaging data ...from the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields programme, as well as a large spectroscopic mosaic obtained with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). Thanks to the extended coverage of this mosaic, we probe the full 3D distribution of galaxies in the field, giving us a unique picture of the extended structure of the cluster and its surroundings. Our final catalogue contains 584 redshifts, representing the largest spectroscopic catalogue of A370 to date. Constructing the model, we measure a total mass distribution that is quantitatively similar to our previous work – though to ensure a low rms error in the model fit, we invoke a significantly large external shear term. Using the redshift catalogue, we search for other bound groups of galaxies, which may give rise to a more physical interpretation of this shear. We identify three structures in narrow redshift ranges along the line of sight, highlighting possible infalling substructures into the main cluster halo. We also discover additional substructure candidates in low-resolution imaging at larger projected radii. More spectroscopic coverage of these regions (pushing close to the A370 virial radius) and more extended, high-resolution imaging will be required to investigate this possibility, further advancing the analysis of these interesting developments.
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