The miniJPAS survey

Identification and characterization of galaxy populations with the J-PAS photometric system

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), PO Box 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain
e-mail: rosa@iaa.es
² Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA), No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
³ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, PO Box 476, 88040-900 Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
⁴ Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica (IRyA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia, Michoacán 58089, Mexico
⁵ Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Unidad Asociada al CSIC, Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
⁶ Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Manuel Lardizabal Ibilbidea 4, San Sebastián, Spain
⁷ Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
⁸ Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, R. do Matão 1226, 05508-090 São Paulo, Brazil
⁹ Observatório do Valongo, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 20080-090 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
¹⁰ Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía (CIDA), AP 264, Mérida 5101, Venezuela
¹¹ Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, AP 70-264, 04510 México, CDMX, Mexico
¹² Núcleo de Astronomía, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile
¹³ Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão 1371, CEP 05508-090, São Paulo, Brazil
¹⁴ Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Avda. Los Castros s/n, 39005 Santander, Spain
¹⁵ Observatório Nacional, Ministério da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovação e Comunicações, Rua General José Cristino, 77, São Cristóvão 20921-400, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
¹⁶ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 311 West Hall, 1085 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, USA
¹⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Box 870324, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
¹⁸ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Calle Vía Láctea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Spain
¹⁹ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 La Laguna, Spain
²⁰ Núcleo de Astrofísica e Cosmologia, PPGCosmo & Dep. de Física, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910 Vitória, ES, Brazil
²¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
²² IFPU – Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Via Beirut 2, 34151 Trieste, Italy
²³ Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
²⁴ Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu, Observatooriumi 1, 61602 Tõravere, Estonia
²⁵ Física, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Avda. España 1680, Casilla, 110 Valparaíso, Chile

Received: 5 November 2020
Accepted: 24 February 2021

Abstract

The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) will soon start imaging thousands of square degrees of the northern sky with its unique set of 56 filters (spectral resolution of R ∼ 60). Before the arrival of the final instrument, we observed 1 deg² on the AEGIS field with an interim camera with all the J-PAS filters. Taking advantage of these data, dubbed miniJPAS, we aim at proving the scientific potential of the J-PAS to derive the stellar population properties of galaxies via fitting codes for spectral energy distributions (SEDs), with the ultimate goal of performing galaxy evolution studies across cosmic time. One parametric (BaySeAGal) and three non-parametric (MUFFIT, AlStar, and TGASPEX) SED-fitting codes are used to constrain the stellar mass, age, metallicity, extinction, and rest-frame and dust-corrected (u − r) colours of a complete flux-limited sample (r_SDSS ≤ 22.5 AB) of miniJPAS galaxies that extends up to z = 1. We generally find consistent results on the galaxy properties derived from the different codes, independently of the galaxy spectral type or redshift; this is remarkable considering that 25% of the J-spectra have signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) ∼3. For galaxies with S/N ≥ 10, we estimate that the J-PAS photometric system will allow us to derive the stellar population properties of rest-frame (u − r) colour, stellar mass, extinction, and mass-weighted age with a precision of 0.04 ± 0.02 mag, 0.07 ± 0.03 dex, 0.2 ± 0.09 mag, and 0.16 ± 0.07 dex, respectively. This precision is equivalent to that obtained with spectroscopic surveys of similar S/N. By using the dust-corrected (u − r) colour–mass diagram, a powerful proxy for characterizing galaxy populations, we find: (i) that the fraction of red and blue galaxies evolves with cosmic time, with red galaxies being ∼38% and ∼18% of the whole population at z = 0.1 and z = 0.5, respectively, and (ii) consistent results between codes for the average intrinsic (u − r) colour, stellar mass, age, and stellar metallicity of blue and red galaxies and their evolution up to z = 1. At all redshifts, the more massive galaxies belong to the red sequence, and these galaxies are typically older and more metal-rich than their counterparts in the blue cloud. Our results confirm that with J-PAS data we will be able to analyse large samples of galaxies up to z ∼ 1, with galaxy stellar masses above log(M_⋆/M_⊙)∼8.9, 9.5, and 9.9 at z = 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7, respectively. The star formation history of a complete sub-sample of galaxies selected at z ∼ 0.1 with log(M_⋆/M_⊙) > 8.3 constrains the cosmic evolution of the star formation rate density up to z ∼ 3, in good agreement with results from cosmological surveys.