Bibcode
Marsan, Z. Cemile; Marchesini, Danilo; Brammer, Gabriel B.; Geier, S.; Kado-Fong, Erin; Labbé, Ivo; Muzzin, Adam; Stefanon, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 842, Issue 1, article id. 21, 18 pp. (2017).
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6
2017
Journal
Citations
46
Refereed citations
41
Description
We present the analysis and results of a spectroscopic follow-up program
of a mass-selected sample of six galaxies at 3< z< 4 using data
from Keck-NIRPSEC and VLT-Xshooter. We confirm the z> 3 redshifts for
half of the sample through the detection of strong nebular emission
lines, and improve the z phot accuracy for the remainder of
the sample through the combination of photometry and spectra. The
modeling of the emission-line-corrected spectral energy distributions
(SEDs) adopting improved redshifts confirms the very large stellar
masses of the sample ({M}* ∼ 1.5{--}4×
{10}11{M}ȯ ) in the first 2 Gyr of cosmic
history, with a diverse range in stellar ages, star-formation rates, and
dust content. From the analysis of emission-line luminosities and
widths, and far-infrared (FIR) fluxes, we confirm that ≳ 80 % of
the sample are hosts to luminous hidden active galactic nuclei (AGNs),
with bolometric luminosities of ∼1044–46 erg
s‑1. We find that the MIPS 24 μm photometry is
largely contaminated by AGN continuum, rendering the SFRs derived using
only 24 μm photometry to be severely overestimated. By including the
emission from the AGN in the modeling of the UV-to-FIR SEDs, we confirm
that the presence of the AGN does not considerably bias the stellar
masses (< 0.3 dex at 1σ). We show evidence for a rapid increase
of the AGN fraction from ∼30% to ∼60%–100% over the 1 Gyr
between z∼ 2 and z∼ 3. Although we cannot exclude some
enhancement of the AGN fraction for our sample due to selection effects,
the small measured [O iii] contamination to the observed K-band fluxes
suggests that our sample is not significantly biased toward massive
galaxies hosting AGNs.
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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
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