Bibcode
Mitchell-Wynne, K.; Cooray, A.; Gong, Y.; Béthermin, M.; Bock, J.; Franceschini, A.; Glenn, J.; Griffin, M.; Halpern, M.; Marchetti, L.; Oliver, S. J.; Page, M. J.; Pérez-Fournon, I.; Schulz, B.; Scott, D.; Smidt, J.; Smith, A.; Vaccari, M.; Vigroux, L.; Wang, L.; Wardlow, J. L.; Zemcov, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 753, Issue 1, article id. 23 (2012).
Advertised on:
7
2012
Journal
Citations
21
Refereed citations
21
Description
The wide-area imaging surveys with the Herschel Space Observatory at
submillimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths have now resulted in catalogs of the
order of one-hundred-thousand dusty, starburst galaxies. These galaxies
capture an important phase of galaxy formation and evolution, but,
unfortunately, the redshift distribution of these galaxies, N(z), is
still mostly uncertain due to limitations associated with counterpart
identification at optical wavelengths and spectroscopic follow-up. We
make a statistical estimate of N(z) using a clustering analysis of
sub-mm galaxies detected at each of 250, 350 and 500 μm from the
Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey centered on the Boötes
field. We cross-correlate Herschel galaxies against galaxy samples at
optical and near-IR wavelengths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the
NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey, and the Spitzer Deep Wide Field Survey. We
create optical and near-IR galaxy samples based on their photometric or
spectroscopic redshift distributions and test the accuracy of those
redshift distributions with similar galaxy samples defined with catalogs
from the Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS), which has superior
spectroscopic coverage. We model the clustering auto- and
cross-correlations of Herschel and optical/IR galaxy samples to estimate
N(z) and clustering bias factors. The S 350 > 20 mJy
galaxies have a bias factor varying with redshift as b(z) =
1.0+1.0 - 0.5(1 + z)1.2+0.3
- 0.7 . This bias and the redshift dependence is
broadly in agreement with galaxies that occupy dark matter halos of mass
in the range of 1012 to 1013 M &sun;.
We find that galaxy selections in all three Spectral and Photometric
Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) bands share a similar average redshift, with
langzrang = 1.8 ± 0.2 for 250 μm selected samples, and
langzrang = 1.9 ± 0.2 for both 350 and 500 μm samples, while
their distributions behave differently. For 250 μm selected galaxies
we find the a larger number of sources with z <= 1 when compared with
the subsequent two SPIRE bands, with 350 and 500 μm selected SPIRE
samples having peaks in N(z) at progressively higher redshifts. We
compare our clustering-based N(z) results to sub-mm galaxy model
predictions in the literature, and with an estimate of N(z) using a
stacking analysis of COSMOS 24 μm detections.
Related projects
Formation and Evolution of Galaxies: Observations in Infrared and other Wavelengths
This IAC research group carries out several extragalactic projects in different spectral ranges, using space as well as ground-based telescopes, to study the cosmological evolution of galaxies and the origin of nuclear activity in active galaxies. The group is a member of the international consortium which built the SPIRE instrument for the
Ismael
Pérez Fournon