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

Autor: Narciso Benítez, Mirjana Pović, A. del Olmo, J. M. Quintana, Jesús Cabrera-Caño, Miguel Cerviño, A. Molino, Emma L. Alfaro, Josefa Masegosa, Mariano Moles, J. Perea, Francisco Prada, A. Fernández-Soto, A. Lopez-Comazzi, J. A. L. Aguerri, Vicent J. Martínez, F. J. Castander, A. J. Cenarro, Kerttu Viironen, L. A. Díaz-García, David Cristóbal-Hornillos, Carlos López-Sanjuan, L. Infante, T. J. Broadhurst, Ignacio Ferreras, C. Husillos, R. M. González Delgado, I. San Roman, Isabel Márquez, J. Cepa, T. Aparicio-Villegas
Přispěvatelé: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), European Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan), Academia Sinica (Taiwan), Gobierno de Aragón, Generalitat Valenciana, Junta de Andalucía, Generalitat de Catalunya, Caja Rural de Teruel
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
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ISSN: 2012-3078
Popis: Aims. Our aim is to determine the distribution of stellar population parameters (extinction, age, metallicity, and star formation rates) of quiescent galaxies within the rest-frame stellar mass-colour diagrams and UVJ colour-colour diagrams corrected for extinction up to z similar to 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 only using rest-frame colours and /or stellar mass. Methods. We set constraints on the stellar population parameters of quiescent galaxies combining the ALHAMBRA multi-filter photo-spectra with our fitting code for spectral energy distribution, MUlti-Filter FITting (MUFFIT), making use of composite stellar population models based on two independent sets of simple stellar population (SSP) 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 LOESS, a bi-dimensional and locally weighted regression method, to reduce uncertainty effects. Results. Quiescent galaxy samples defined via classical UVJ diagrams are typically contaminated by a similar to 20% fraction of DSF galaxies. A significant part of the galaxies in the green valley are actually obscured star-forming galaxies (similar to 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.© ESO 2019
The authors are grateful to the referee for their fruitful comments, which contributed to improving the present research. This work has been supported by the Programa Nacional de Astronomia y Astrofisica of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, grants AYA2012-30789 and AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P), by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (grant MOST 106-2628-M-001-003-MY3), by the Academia Sinica (grant AS-IA-107-M01), and by the Government of Aragon (Research Group E103). L. A. D. G. acknowledges support from the Caja Rural de Teruel. L. A. D. G. also thanks I. F. for offering the opportunity to develop part of this research at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). We also acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER funds through grants AYA2010-15081, AYA2010-15169, AYA2010-22111-C03-01, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2011-29517-C03-01, AYA2012-39620, AYA2013-40611-P, AYA2013-42227-P, AYA2013-43188-P, AYA2013-48623-C2-1, AYA2013-48623-C2-2, ESP2013-48274, AYA201457490-P, AYA2014-58861-C3-1, AYA2016-76682-C3-1-P, AYA2016-77846-P, AYA2016-81065-C2-1, AYA2016-81065-C2-2; Generalitat Valenciana projects Prometeo 2009/064 and PROMETEOII/2014/060; Junta de Andalucia grants TIC114, JA2828, P10-FQM-6444; and Generalitat de Catalunya project SGR-1398. Throughout this research, we made use of the Matplotlib package (Hunter 2007), a 2D graphics package used for Python that is designed for interactive scripting and quality image generation. This paper is dedicated to Marian Leon Canalejo for being there when L. A. D. G. needed her most and for her patience and continuous encouragement he was finishing his PhD.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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