MOSEL: Strong [OIII] 5007 Emitting Galaxies at (3 < z < 4) from the ZFOURGE Survey Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Abstract To understand how strong emission-line galaxies (SELGs) contribute to the overall growth of galaxies and star formation history of the universe, we target SELGs from the ZFOURGE imaging survey that have blended H+[O iii] rest-frame equivalent widths of >230 and 2.5< <4.0. Using Keck/MOSFIRE, we measure 49 redshifts for galaxies brighter than K s =25 mag as part of our Multi-Object Spectroscopic Emission Line (MOSEL) survey. Our spectroscopic success rate is 53% and uncertainty is =[z/(1+z)]=0.0135. We confirm 31 ELGs at , and show that SELGs have spectroscopic rest-frame [O iii]5007 equivalent widths of 100500 and tend to be lower-mass systems [ 8.29.6] compared with more typical star-forming galaxies. The SELGs lie 0.9dex above the star-forming main sequence at z3.5 and have high inferred gas fractions of 60%, i.e., the inferred gas masses can easily fuel a starburst to double stellar masses within 10100 Myr. Combined with recent results using ZFOURGE, our analysis indicates that (1) strong [O iii]5007 emission signals an early episode of intense stellar growth in low-mass [ ] galaxies and (2) many, if not most, galaxies at z>3 go through this starburst phase. If true, low-mass galaxies with strong [O iii]5007 emission (EWrest>200 ) may be an increasingly important source of ionizing UV radiation at z>3.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 8.33

author list (cited authors)

  • Tran, K., Ben, F., Alcorn, L. Y., Yuan, T., Nanayakkara, T., Cohn, J., ... Tomczak, A.

citation count

  • 12

complete list of authors

  • Tran, Kim-Vy H||Ben, Forrest||Alcorn, Leo Y||Yuan, Tiantian||Nanayakkara, Themiya||Cohn, Jonathan||Cowley, Michael||Glazebrook, Karl||Gupta, Anshu||Kacprzak, Glenn G||Kewley, Lisa||Labbe, Ivo||Papovich, Casey||Spitler, Lee||Straatman, Caroline MS||Tomczak, Adam

publication date

  • July 2020