Issue |
A&A
Volume 654, October 2021
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A80 | |
Number of page(s) | 51 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140876 | |
Published online | 15 October 2021 |
Recovery and analysis of rest-frame UV emission lines in 2052 galaxies observed with MUSE at 1.5 < z < 6.4⋆
1
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: kbschmidt@aip.de
2
Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, Chemin Pegasi 51, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
3
INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via P. Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
4
Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
5
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, VIC 3112, Australia
6
Univ. Lyon, Univ. Lyon1, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574, 69230 Saint-Genis-Laval, France
7
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
8
Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile
9
Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, CNES, Toulouse, France
10
European Southern Observatory, Av. Alonso de Córdova 3107, 763 0355 Vitacura, Santiago, Chile
11
Institut für Astrophysik, Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
12
Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
13
Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
14
Department of Physics, ETH Zürich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland
Received:
25
March
2021
Accepted:
8
July
2021
Rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) emission lines probe electron densities, gas-phase abundances, metallicities, and ionization parameters of the emitting star-forming galaxies and their environments. The strongest main UV emission line, Lyα, has been instrumental in advancing the general knowledge of galaxy formation in the early universe. However, observing Lyα emission becomes increasingly challenging at z ≳ 6 when the neutral hydrogen fraction of the circumgalactic and intergalactic media increases. Secondary weaker UV emission lines provide important alternative methods for studying galaxy properties at high redshift. We present a large sample of rest-frame UV emission line sources at intermediate redshift for calibrating and exploring the connection between secondary UV lines and the emitting galaxies’ physical properties and their Lyα emission. The sample of 2052 emission line sources with 1.5 < z < 6.4 was collected from integral field data from the MUSE-Wide and MUSE-Deep surveys taken as part of Guaranteed Time Observations. The objects were selected through untargeted source detection (i.e., no preselection of sources as in dedicated spectroscopic campaigns) in the three-dimensional MUSE data cubes. We searched optimally extracted one-dimensional spectra of the full sample for UV emission features via emission line template matching, resulting in a sample of more than 100 rest-frame UV emission line detections. We show that the detection efficiency of (non-Lyα) UV emission lines increases with survey depth, and that the emission line strength of He IIλ1640 Å, [O III] λ1661 + O III] λ1666, and [Si III] λ1883 + Si III] λ1892 correlate with the strength of [C III] λ1907 + C III] λ1909. The rest-frame equivalent width (EW0) of [C III] λ1907 + C III] λ1909 is found to be roughly 0.22 ± 0.18 of EW0(Lyα). We measured the velocity offsets of resonant emission lines with respect to systemic tracers. For C IVλ1548 + C IVλ1551 we find that ΔvC IV ≲ 250 km s−1, whereas ΔvLyα falls in the range of 250−500 km s−1 which is in agreement with previous results from the literature. The electron density ne measured from [Si III] λ1883 + Si III] λ1892 and [C III] λ1907 + C III] λ1909 line flux ratios is generally < 105 cm−3 and the gas-phase abundance is below solar at 12 + log10(O/H)≈8. Lastly, we used “PhotoIonization Model Probability Density Functions” to infer physical parameters of the full sample and individual systems based on photoionization model parameter grids and observational constraints from our UV emission line searches. This reveals that the UV line emitters generally have ionization parameter log10(U) ≈ −2.5 and metal mass fractions that scatter around Z ≈ 10−2, that is Z ≈ 0.66 Z⊙. Value-added catalogs of the full sample of MUSE objects studied in this work and a collection of UV line emitters from the literature are provided with this paper.
Key words: ultraviolet: galaxies / galaxies: high-redshift / galaxies: ISM / ISM: lines and bands / methods: observational / techniques: imaging spectroscopy
The catalogs described in Appendix B (Table B.1) and C (Table C.1) are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/654/A80
© ESO 2021
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