MEGaSaURA. II. Stacked spectra Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Rigby J.R.
  2. Bayliss M.B.
  3. Chisholm J.
  4. Bordoloi R.
  5. Sharon K.,Gladders M.D.
  6. Johnson T.
  7. Paterno-Mahler R.
  8. Wuyts E.
  9. Dahle H.,Acharyya A.
  10. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We stack the rest-frame ultraviolet spectra of N=14 highly magnified gravitationally lensed galaxies at redshifts 1.6<z<3.6. The resulting new composite spans 900<{lambda}_rest_<3000{AA}, with a peak signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 103 per spectral resolution element (~100km/s). It is the highest S/N, highest spectral resolution composite spectrum of z~2-3 galaxies yet published. The composite reveals numerous weak nebular emission lines and stellar photospheric absorption lines that can serve as new physical diagnostics, particularly at high redshift with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We report equivalent widths to aid in proposing for and interpreting JWST spectra. We examine the velocity profiles of strong absorption features in the composite, and in a matched composite of z~0 COS/HST galaxy spectra. We find remarkable similarity in the velocity profiles at z~0 and z~2, suggesting that similar physical processes control the outflows across cosmic time. While the maximum outflow velocity depends strongly on ionization potential, the absorption-weighted mean velocity does not. As such, the bulk of the high- ionization absorption traces the low-ionization gas, with an additional blueshifted absorption tail extending to at least -2000km/s. We interpret this tail as arising from the stellar wind and photospheres of massive stars. Starburst99 models are able to replicate this high-velocity absorption tail. However, these theoretical models poorly reproduce several of the photospheric absorption features, indicating that improvements are needed to match observational constraints on the massive stellar content of star-forming galaxies at z~2.

Keywords
  1. galaxies
  2. gravitational-lensing
  3. visible-astronomy
  4. spectroscopy
  5. ultraviolet-astronomy
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2018ApJ...853...87R
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/853/87
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/853/87
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18530087

Access

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http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/853/87
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/853/87
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/853/87
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History

2019-02-07T09:35:48Z
Resource record created
2019-02-07T09:35:48Z
Created
2019-03-06T07:56:31Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr