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SPATIALLY RESOLVED HST GRISM SPECTROSCOPY OF A LENSED EMISSION LINE GALAXY AT z ∼ 1*

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Published 2012 June 29 © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
, , Citation Brenda L. Frye et al 2012 ApJ 754 17 DOI 10.1088/0004-637X/754/1/17

0004-637X/754/1/17

ABSTRACT

We take advantage of gravitational lensing amplification by A1689 (z = 0.187) to undertake the first space-based census of emission line galaxies (ELGs) in the field of a massive lensing cluster. Forty-three ELGs are identified to a flux of i775 = 27.3 via slitless grism spectroscopy. One ELG (at z = 0.7895) is very bright owing to lensing magnification by a factor of ≈4.5. Several Balmer emission lines (ELs) detected from ground-based follow-up spectroscopy signal the onset of a major starburst for this low-mass galaxy (M* ≈ 2 × 109M) with a high specific star formation rate (≈20 Gyr−1). From the blue ELs we measure a gas-phase oxygen abundance consistent with solar (12+log(O/H) = 8.8  ±  0.2). We break the continuous line-emitting region of this giant arc into seven ∼1 kpc bins (intrinsic size) and measure a variety of metallicity-dependent line ratios. A weak trend of increasing metal fraction is seen toward the dynamical center of the galaxy. Interestingly, the metal line ratios in a region offset from the center by ∼1 kpc have a placement on the blue H ii region excitation diagram with f ([O iii])/f (Hβ) and f ([Ne iii])/f (Hβ) that can be fitted by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). This asymmetrical AGN-like behavior is interpreted as a product of shocks in the direction of the galaxy's extended tail, possibly instigated by a recent galaxy interaction.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Star formation in galaxies peaks at redshifts z ∼ 2 (Reddy et al. 2005; Conselice et al. 2011), with an overall decline in the global star formation rate density toward later cosmic times (Lilly et al. 1996). Galaxies during the critical redshift range of 1<z < 3 are actively converting gas into stars and, at least to some extent, building up central supermassive black holes (Reddy et al. 2008; Somerville 2009). Morphologically, these galaxies are already well underway with assuming the familiar shapes of the Hubble sequence (Kriek et al. 2009). Given the unfortunate placement of major star formation features split between the optical and infrared passbands, building up a database of ELGs during this important cosmic epoch is slow.

Sample sizes of ELGs at these intermediate redshifts are small and comprise necessarily the brightest examples. Properties of these ELGs are determined typically from ratios of strong rest-frame optical emission lines (ELs). The values for the line ratios are persistently high compared to the standard excitation sequence for H ii regions (Erb et al. 2006; Straughn et al. 2009; Pérez-Montero et al. 2009; Xia et al. 2011; Trump et al. 2011). In turn the elevated line ratios are generally accompanied by higher ionization parameters and electron densities, indicating that physical conditions may be different from the local universe (Liu et al. 2008; Brinchmann et al. 2008; Lehnert et al. 2009; Richard et al. 2011). Spatially resolved observations can assist with the search for an explanation of these consistently high nebular line ratios. In one case of a field galaxy at z = 1.6, HDF-BMZ1299, integral field unit observations have revealed line ratios in the innermost ∼1.5 kpc that are best fitted by an AGN. This measurement would not have been achievable in the spectrum integrated over the whole object (Wright et al. 2010). Similarly, a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) grism study of ELGs from CANDELS (Grogin et al. 2011; Koekemoer et al. 2011) data in GOODS-S reveals the likelihood of weak AGN activity in z ∼ 2 low-mass, low-metallicity galaxies (Trump et al. 2011).

It is feasible to use low-resolution grism spectroscopy with HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to study ELGs and also galaxies with strong breaks (bulges, Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs)). This approach has been used extensively by the Grism Advanced Camera Program for Extragalactic Science (GRAPES) and Probing Evolution and Reionization Spectroscopically Treasury teams (PI: Malhotra). For example, Hathi et al. (2009) studied the stellar populations of late-type galaxies at z ∼ 1 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field using low-resolution grism spectroscopy. They identified the bulges in a sample of 34 galaxies by a combination of their prominent 4000 Å break and visual morphologies. They measured stellar ages in the bulges that are similar to stellar ages in the inner disks and used this information to constrain galaxy formation mechanisms. Ferreras et al. (2009) measured galaxy properties for a sample of 228 galaxies at z ∼ 1 selected by morphology and HST ACS grism spectroscopy to be early types. They modeled the star formation histories and found the galaxy formation epoch to correlate strongly with stellar mass in massive early-type galaxies. Xia et al. (2011) reported on a comparison of 76 ELGs in Chandra Deep Field South acquired with both the ACS grism and ground-based spectrographs covering similar wavelengths. They compared the grism redshift estimates for a typical case of a single EL plus broadband photometry with the higher resolution ground-based spectroscopy and successfully recovered the original grism redshift estimates. In yet a different use of the ACS grism, Nilsson et al. (2011) undertook a study of LBGs at z ∼ 1 detected in the UV by GALEX. They used grism spectra covering the 4000 Å break to measure more accurate positions of this break than could be achieved by the broadband colors alone, which they then used to inform the SED models. The measurements yielded physical characteristics of their low-redshift sample of LBGs that were similar to LBG properties at higher redshifts.

More recently, grism spectroscopy using WFC3 on HST Early Release Science program (Windhorst et al. 2011) has yielded the discovery of 48 ELGs to a limiting magnitude of m = 25.5 (AB). They acquired one field observed with the G102 and G140 grisms, each at a two-orbit depth (Straughn et al. 2011). Specific star formation rates (sSFRs) were measured based on the SED fits that were low for the highest mass galaxies and that evolved with redshift, in general agreement with galaxy downsizing (Feulner et al. 2005; Bauer et al. 2005; Elbaz et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2010; Damen et al. 2009; Zheng et al. 2007).

The introduction of gravitational lensing to grism analyses is useful because it boosts the brightnesses and sizes of all objects in the background, allowing for the study of individual sources of line emission at higher signal-to-noise and higher spatial resolution. For the case of an EL on top of a stellar continuum in particular, the effect of field dilution is to smear out the continuum flux over more pixels. At the same time, the compact star-forming regions or galactic nuclei are also magnified but effectively remain unresolved. Thus, the extended continuum is diluted with respect to the ELs, and the detection threshold is lowered to include weaker EL systems. Assisted by the lensing effect, the first metallicities at intermediate redshift are being measured directly (Yuan & Kewley 2009; Rigby et al. 2011). Also spatially resolved spectroscopy is achieved, enabling measurements of star formation properties across the disk (Jones et al. 2010; Hainline et al. 2009; Frye et al. 2007).

The choice of a large, cluster-sized lens offers magnification of all galaxies in the background over fields of ∼2–3 arcmin in radius. A1689 (z = 0.187, measured by Frye et al. 2007) with its large tangential critical curve of 50'' is one of the most massive and well-studied clusters (Broadhurst et al. 2005; Limousin et al. 2007; Coe et al. 2010). The galaxies situated behind massive clusters have notoriously low surface brightnesses, and as such a space-based platform like HST is necessary for undertaking detailed and spatially resolved studies of ELGs with fields of view larger than can be achieved with integral field unit spectroscopy from the ground. HST has already proved highly successful at identifying ELGs in a survey mode at intermediate redshifts (Xu et al. 2007; Straughn et al. 2008, 2009, 2011; Trump et al. 2011) and at high redshifts (Malhotra et al. 2005; Rhoads et al. 2009). In addition to the wide field of view, spatially resolved spectroscopy is achieved with a resolution equal to our minimum aperture extraction width of five rows or 0farcs25 and is acquired in the absence of competing strong atmospheric sky lines.

Here, we present a new census of ELGs in the field of the lensing cluster A1689 with the G800L grism on ACS on HST. This is the first space-based slitless EL survey centered on a massive lensing cluster. One new ELG at z ≈ 0.79 is a star-forming galaxy which we designate by the paper reference Frye et al. (2012; this paper) object 1, which shortens to "F12_ELG1." This giant arc with ∼8'' extent is rare for showing a continuous line-emitting region in several features over half its optical extent. We have taken both space- and ground-based spatially resolved spectroscopy of this one bright ELG with a total magnitude integrated over the galaxy image of i775 = 20.56 ± 0.01. This object is suitable for exploring the variations in physical properties across the galaxy disk.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we present our imaging and spectroscopic sample and data reduction techniques. In Section 3, we give results relating to ELGs in the cluster. In Section 4, we report results for new giant arc F12_ELG1. In Section 5, we use a lens model to construct a one-dimensional magnification profile, compute individual magnifications for galaxies of interest, and to generate a source plane image for F12_ELG1. In Section 6, we discuss other field galaxies of interest, including another new sample ELG with closely spaced sources of line emission which we call "F12_ELG2." The conclusions appear in Section 7. We assume a cosmology with H0 = 70 km s−1 Mpc−1, Ωm, 0 = 0.3, and ΩΛ, 0 = 0.7.

2. OBSERVATIONS AND REDUCTIONS

2.1. ACS Grism Data

The central portion of A1689 is observed with the G800L grism with ACS on HST along with the broadband (F475W, F625W, F775W, and F850LP) exposures presented in Broadhurst et al. (2005). A single pointing is used at one position angle in a 7.1 ks exposure (three orbits). The resulting dispersed image covers a wavelength range of 5700–9800 Å at a resolution of R ∼ 90. The analysis of these images is performed using software discussed in detail by Meurer et al. (2007, hereafter M07). M07 present G800L grism observation of a well-studied unlensed field, the Hubble Deep Field-North (HDF-N), to a similar depth as our observations. They reduce and analyze this data set in two different ways: Method A, aXe selection and reduction (Kümmel et al. 2009), which is similar to the GRAPES team pipeline and Method B, "blind" EL source detection. Method A yields a similar set of sources as Method B, with the latter additionally yielding >50% more sources and more cases of multiple EL sources (i.e., star-forming regions) per object. A salient feature of Method B is its emphasis on finding ELs in the two-dimensional dispersed frames. This approach enables lone ELs with weak galaxy continuum flux to be detected against the high background that is characteristic of grism images. For our aims to do spatially resolved spectroscopy and to maximize the number of EL sources, we perform the reductions using Method B. The primary steps of the reduction algorithm are discussed below.

The initial data reduction is performed with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) ACS CCD reduction pipeline CALACS (Hack 1999), from which we use the cosmic-ray-rejected "CRJ" G800L images along with the individual flat-fielded "FLT" broadband images (F475W, F625W, F775W, and F850LP). Since CALACS does not flatfield G800L exposures we apply our own corrections for pixel-to-pixel variations using a standard F814W flat from the STScI archive. To remove small dithers between exposures and to correct for geometric distortion we employ the ACS team pipeline Apsis (Blakeslee et al. 2003). These initial reduction steps produce geometrically corrected and aligned grism images, which are processed further as described below. Similarly, Apsis is used to align and process the set of broadband images; the weighted sum of these is what we designate as the "direct" image.

Galaxies with strong ELs should be the easiest sources to identify in slitless images like our G800L data. Method B of M07 requires no prior knowledge of the location of the emitting source, although the direct image is needed to find the precise position of the emission. Moving forward from the initial reductions discussed above, we next subtract off a 13 × 3 median smoothed version of the dispersed image, revealing the ELs. We also subtract off a smoothed version of the direct image from itself. The result of this high-pass filter is to remove slowly varying background levels, including galaxy continuum, starlight from galaxy neighbors, and other sources. As detailed in M07 we have determined a geometric distortion solution relating positions in the direct image to the corresponding positions of the zeroth order in the grism image. This solution along with the measured flux scaling between direct and zeroth-order images is used to mask out all significant flux from zeroth-order images in the grism frame. SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996) is used to find the EL sources in this masked and filtered grism frame. A five-row segment of both of the filtered dispersed and direct image is extracted, collapsed to 1D spectra and cross-correlated. The peak in the cross-correlation gives the location of the emitting source and an estimated line wavelength. The aXe package is then used to extract a 1D spectrum from the dispersed image (prior to any filtering) using the location we found as the adopted source position. Gaussian fits to the lines in this spectrum are used to determine their final wavelength and flux values. A portion of the dispersed image that includes the spatially resolved line emission for ELG F12_ELG1 at z = 0.79 appears in Figure 1. We present the 1D spectrum of F12_ELG1 in Sections 4 and 6. Figure 2 shows 1D spectra for other representative ELGs in our sample. Some line pairs can be distinguished which assist with line identifications. Notably, nebular lines [O iii] and Hβ are marginally resolved in the new galaxy ELG 5158, and the close line pair Hα and [S ii] can both be identified in the new galaxy ELG 4298.

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Upper panel: dispersed image of a portion of the central region of A1689, including the giant arc F12_ELG1 that is a primary result of this paper and a cluster member, ELG 2494. The dispersion direction is horizontal and the spatial direction is vertical. Note the spatially extended emission in F12_ELG1. Three ELSs are found in this single ELG. One-dimensional spectra for F12_ELG1 are shown in Figures 59. Lower panel: color image of the same portion of A1689 taken with the HST ACS gri filters.

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Figure 2.

Figure 2. Sample spectra from our G800L ACS grism spectral catalog. The spectrum for ELG 4971 shows a detection of Hα in a cluster member at z = 0.202 (top panel). Despite the low spectral resolution of the grism, redshifts can still be derived even from closely spaced nebular emission features. For example, Hα be distinguished from [S ii] in some cases (ELG 4298), Hβ can be distinguished from [O iii] in ELG 5158, and [Ne iii] can be seen clearly with respect to [O ii] in ELG 5700. Details concerning these results appear in Table 1.

Standard image High-resolution image

We refer to an emission feature in the dispersed image as an EL (typically Hα, Hβ, [O iii], or [O ii]). The corresponding position in the direct image is called an emission line source (ELS). An ELS is typically an H ii region or galaxy nucleus, and in some cases there is more than one EL per ELS (e.g., [O ii] and [O iii]). The galaxy containing the ELS(s) is an emission line galaxy (ELG). If the galaxy is spatially resolved, there may be multiple ELSs per ELG. We identify a total of 43 galaxies (ELGs), 52 ELSs, and 66 ELs. Somewhat surprisingly, three-quarters of the ELGs are new in this well-studied cluster field. The spectroscopic results appear in Table 1. We identify nine ELGs in the cluster, 30 ELGs in the background, and five ELGs in the foreground. As the number of ELSs is larger than the number of ELGs, some ELGs have multiple H ii regions spatially resolved by the grism. In Table 2, we separate out the ELGs with two or more ELSs. The details concerning our line list and EL properties sorted by species are given in the Appendix.

Table 1. Spectroscopic Catalog of Galaxies in the Field of A1689

ID R.A. Decl. i775 Line Center log( fl) REW Line ID zgrism Ref.
  (hr) (○) (AB) (Å) (erg s−1 cm−2) (Å)      
6621 13.189628 −1.3506333 26.69 ± 0.04 6712.4 −16.63 429 ± 277 [O ii] 0.800  
3483 13.189729 −1.323381 20.11 ± 0.01 8921.4 −15.25 He i 0.04  
11260 13.190046 −1.348567 24.21 ± 0.01 9010.5 −15.74 2034.8 ± 483.0 [O iii] 0.810  
6381 13.190094 −1.341133 24.17 ± 0.01 8740.6 −16.06 97.2 ± 19.5 [O iii] 0.758  
11186 13.190131 −1.353053 18.33 ± 0.01 8126.7 −15.86 6.1 ± 1.4 0.235 a
11136 13.190185 −1.357363 23.32 ± 0.01 8045.1 −16.35 65.8 ± 15.2 [O iii] 0.615  
11322 13.190542 −1.326375 19.82 ± 0.01 9505.6 −16.18 67.5 ± 16.1 0.449 a
6182 13.190737 −1.324731 24.66 ± 0.01 8383.4 −16.54 59.4 ± 20.0 0.277  
11226 13.190740 −1.3298028 21.61 ± 0.01 7783.1 −16.61 13.3 ± 5.0 0.186  
11040 13.190872 −1.349414 18.97 ± 0.01 7983.6 −16.09 10.7 ± 2.7 0.215 a, b
4752 13.190875 −1.3495417 18.97 ± 0.01 7956.9 −16.06 10.8 ± 1.3 0.212 a, b
6680 13.190824 −1.311189 25.83 ± 0.03 7332.8 −16.59 <87 [O iii] 0.470  
5582 13.190834 −1.334439 26.32 ± 0.04 7531.3 −16.42 66.3 ± 17.9 [O iii] 0.510  
11324 13.190896 −1.313931 21.70 ± 0.01 6913.5 −16.55 54.6 ± 15.1 [O iii] 0.384 c
4971 13.190906 −1.349731 18.97 ± 0.01 7972.9 −15.89 64.1 ± 8.7 0.202 a, b
6583 13.190941 −1.309417 23.84 ± 0.01 7932.0 −16.69 <50 [O iii] 0.590  
6578 13.190947 −1.309414 23.84 ± 0.01 7917.2 −16.19 <137 [O iii] 0.590  
4277 13.191041 −1.352267 20.70 ± 0.01 9571.7 −15.62 18.3 ± 1.7 0.462  
4298 13.191076 −1.351167 21.74 ± 0.01 7933.4 −15.74 70.4 ± 5.5 0.209  
4298 13.191076 −1.351167 21.74 ± 0.01 6012.6 −15.77 17.5 ± 2.2 [O iii] 0.209  
4298 13.191076 −1.351167 21.74 ± 0.01 8128.4 −16.20 18.1 ± 2.6 [S ii] 0.209  
4251 13.191098 −1.350869 21.74 ± 0.01 7978.2 −16.21 57.8 ± 12.1 0.210  
5700 13.191123 −1.321883 22.04 ± 0.01 7966.7 −15.57 107.3 ± 6.0 [O ii] 1.139 c
5700 13.191123 −1.321883 22.04 ± 0.01 8235.6 −16.41 24.3 ± 3.6 [Ne iii] 1.139  
5570 13.191162 −1.323636 23.57 ± 0.01 8155.7 −16.19 73.4 ± 16.4 [O iii] 0.637  
11149 13.191176 −1.323664 23.57 ± 0.01 8115.4 −16.23 144.2 ± 42.4 [O iii] 0.629  
6154 13.191220 −1.309083 23.24 ± 0.01 7344.0 −16.31 127.2 ± 21.9 [O iii] 0.473 a
4744 13.191277 −1.338045 24.73 ± 0.02 8826.7 −15.74 149.3 ± 11.6 [O ii] 1.368  
10640a 13.191326 −1.361966 20.56 ± 0.01 6656.1 −16.05 41.2 ± 6.6 [O ii] 0.783 a, d
10640a 13.191326 −1.361966 20.56 ± 0.01 8928.1 −16.24 74.5 ± 19.3 [O iii] 0.787  
10638a 13.191334 −1.362022 20.56 ± 0.01 6753.2 −16.16 26.1 ± 5.0 [O ii] 0.820 a, d
10638a 13.191334 −1.362022 20.56 ± 0.01 9020.8 −16.27 77.5 ± 7.7 [O iii] 0.807  
20002a 13.191347 −1.362072 20.56 ± 0.01 6673.2 −16.31 24.1 ± 4.1 [O ii] 0.790 a, d
20002a 13.191347 −1.362072 20.56 ± 0.01 8935.5 −15.98 77.8 ± 9.8 [O iii] 0.790  
2630 13.191381 −1.363211 24.97 ± 0.02 6658.2 −16.44 104.3 ± 26.8 [O iii] 0.335  
2494 13.191546 −1.360030 24.21 ± 0.01 6071.8 −15.86 407.9 ± 66.3 [O iii] 0.215  
2494 13.191546 −1.360030 24.21 ± 0.01 7970.2 −16.35 176.3 ± 45.9 0.215  
10746 13.191596 −1.350106 19.08 ± 0.01 8069.4 −16.09 21.2 ± 3.2 0.230  
11085 13.191659 −1.317806 20.43 ± 0.01 7652.2 −15.68 61.4 ± 4.2 [O iii] 0.532  
20004 13.191663 −1.317805 20.43 ± 0.01 7790.0 −16.15 28.4 ± 1.7 [O iii] 0.560  
20004 13.191663 −1.317805 20.43 ± 0.01 7560.1 −15.86 29.3 ± 2.3 [O iii] 0.513  
5158 13.191787 −1.313802 24.62 ± 0.01 8332.8 −15.67 <296 [O iii] 0.671  
5158 13.191787 −1.313802 24.62 ± 0.01 8123.4 −16.80 ... 0.671  
1946 13.191900 −1.360658 20.57 ± 0.01 8419.0 −15.71 78.5 ± 12.1 [O iii] 0.700 a, e
1946 13.191900 −1.360658 20.57 ± 0.01 6352.2 −16.05 20.7 ± 4.7 [O ii] 0.700  
4194 13.191980 −1.323292 22.40 ± 0.01 8001.5 −16.31 29.1 ± 7.1 [O ii] 1.145 c
10412 13.192066 −1.359247 20.65 ± 0.01 7736.1 −15.87 34.5 ± 8.0 0.179  
10782 13.192252 −1.326700 19.22 ± 0.01 7566.0 −15.88 27.6 ± 2.4 0.153 b
3203 13.192258 −1.326697 19.22 ± 0.01 7678.8 −15.26 72.4 ± 3.3 0.170 b
3203 13.192258 −1.326697 19.22 ± 0.01 7866.8 −16.21 7.1 ± 1.0 [S ii] 0.170  
10154 13.192360 −1.371497 20.26 ± 0.01 6715.2 −16.00 59.5 ± 9.2 [O iii] 0.115 a
10226 13.192504 −1.361381 20.02 ± 0.01 7479.4 −16.60 19.7 ± 7.1 0.140  
1651 13.192538 −1.3473694 25.51 ± 0.02 8850.5 −15.94 434.2 ± 114.0 [O ii] 1.38  
804 13.193044 −1.351555 26.91 ± 0.07 6588.0 −16.56 106.1 ± 33.6 [O iii] 0.320  
10399 13.193055 −1.330869 25.85 ± 0.02 7445.9 −16.63 <100 Lyα 5.13 e, f
1077 13.193131 −1.341633 21.25 ± 0.01 7967.6 −16.17 23.2 ± 2.8 [O iii] 0.595 a, e
1184 13.193212 −1.337078 18.37 ± 0.01 6917.1 −15.42 61.3 ± 5.5 0.054 a, b
1157 13.193232 −1.336661 18.37 ± 0.01 7852.0 −14.82 133.6 ± 6.0 0.195 a, b
1157 13.193232 −1.336661 18.37 ± 0.01 5970.9 −15.78 5.5 ± 1.1 [O iii] 0.195  
1157 13.193232 −1.336661 18.37 ± 0.01 5795.5 −15.53 3.5 ± 1.3 0.195  
1157 13.193232 −1.336661 18.37 ± 0.01 7040.1 −15.94 8.6 ± 2.1 HeI 0.195  
1507 13.193252 −1.326861 20.22 ± 0.01 7833.0 −16.37 15.7 ± 3.3 0.194  
1094 13.193518 −1.328469 19.44 ± 0.01 7848.0 −15.89 23.7 ± 2.2 0.195 b
1094 13.193518 −1.328469 19.44 ± 0.01 8035.6 −16.38 6.7 ± 1.2 [S ii] 0.195  
486 13.193702 −1.335958 26.08 ± 0.03 8057.7 −16.57 <92 [O iii] 0.615  
20001 13.193894 −1.335958 20.28 ± 0.01 7901.7 −16.11 20.2 ± 2.2 0.205 b

Notes. aSpectroscopic redshift from the catalog of Duc et al. (2002). bSpectroscopic redshift from the catalog of Balogh et al. (2002). cSpectroscopic redshift from Richard et al. (2008, private communication). dThis is an emission line in the ELG F12_ELG1. eSpectroscopic redshift from the catalog of Frye et al. (2007). fSpectroscopic redshift from the catalog of Frye et al. (2002).

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Table 2. ELGs with Multiple Emission Line Sources

Group ID zELS
1a 10782 0.153
  3203 0.170
2 (F12_ELG2) 20004 0.560
  11085 0.532
3 4971 0.202
  4752 0.212
  11040 0.215
4b 4298 0.209
  4251 0.210
5 6583 0.590
  6578 0.590
6 11149 0.629
  5570 0.637
7 (F12_ELG1) 10638 "B" 0.815
  20002 "A" 0.790
  10640 "C" 0.785

Notes. aELS 10782 is in the foreground of A1689. bThere is a third ELS projected near to the line of sight but with different colors, ELS 4277 at zgrism = 0.462.

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2.2. Imaging and Additional Spectroscopy

Extensive ancillary data exist to support the grism observations. Images of the central portion of A1689 were taken in several bands, as follows: U (DuPont Telescope, Las Campanas), B (NOT, La Palma), V (Keck II LRIS), I (Keck II LRIS), g475r625i775 and z850 (HST ACS), and P3.6 and P4.5 (Spitzer IRAC). Spectroscopy of hundreds of arclets has been acquired at several large ground-based observatories. The existing photometry and spectroscopy are discussed in detail elsewhere (Broadhurst et al. 2005; Frye et al. 2002, 2007, 2008).

Additional spectroscopy was obtained for F12_ELG1 at z = 0.79 in 2010 May with the DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) on Keck II (Faber et al. 2003). The observations were made through a 1 arcsec slit width with the 1200 lines mm−1 grating blazed at 10fdg16 and set to a central wavelength of 7800 Å. A combination of 12 slitlets was placed together to construct the long-slit mask "Long1.0B." Two 300 s exposures were taken during dusk twilight. The seeing was 0.5–0farcs6 FWHM. Long1.0B provided a resolution of R = 5870 measured from an isolated night sky line at 7571.75 Å. The data were reduced with the DEEP2 DEIMOS pipeline (Cooper et al. 2012; Newman et al. 2012). Observations were also acquired on the Magellan Telescope I (Walter Baade) in 2009 March and 2010 March on the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS). One multislit mask was used with 35 targets using the 600 lines mm−1 grism at a blaze angle of 14.67 Å and a central wavelength of 8410 Å as a part of a different program (PIs: Malhotra and Rhoads). The grism provided a resolution of R = 2300. Eight 1800 s exposures were taken in a single position.

3. THE CLUSTER

We identify eight ELSs that are Hα emitters (HAEs) in the redshift range 0.159 <z < 0.206, which is the 3σ velocity dispersion redshift criterion established by Balogh et al. (2002). There are three Hα emitting sources in the foreground of A1689, and ten Hα emitting sources with z >0.206. There is a high velocity tail in the redshift range 0.207<z < 0.215 that includes five ELSs that are HAEs (Figure 3). Our sample is distinguished from the larger ground-based Hα galaxy survey of Balogh et al. (2002) primarily by our fainter flux limit of iAB = 27.3. Six of the galaxies that are HAEs with redshifts 0.159<z < 0.215 are new to the literature: ELG 6621a (serendipitous discovery, see the Appendix), ELG 11226, ELG 4298/4251 (ELS 4298 and ELS 4251), ELG 2494, ELG 10412, and ELG 1507.

Figure 3.

Figure 3. Histogram of HAEs from this sample (purple positive-slope hashed region), compared to that of all published spectroscopic redshifts in A1689 (green negative-slope hashed region). There is an extended tail toward higher redshifts which may indicate substructure and/or cluster infall. The HAEs that satisfy the redshift criteria for cluster membership are enclosed by the gray filled region. The mean redshift of all known cluster members is given by the solid line and the mean redshift of our sample cluster members is given by the dashed line.

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Figure 4 shows the locations of our sample cluster members (green stars) and of HAEs drawn from the literature (purple diamonds). The [O ii], [O iii], and Balmer line emitters from the large sample of Duc et al. (2002) appear as large open squares. The positions of other cluster members are also marked (small open squares), drawn largely from the literature as compiled in Frye et al. (2007, their Appendix). The large tilted rectangle marks the ACS field of view and the black circle shows the position of the canonical 50 arcsec Einstein ring for A1689. The HAEs presented in this paper have measured line fluxes of −14.82 < log f < −16.61. The symbols are organized by total flux, with small and large symbols identifying log (f) ⩾ −16.0. Using the relation in Kennicutt (1998) we compute star formation rates of 0.017 M yr−1 < SFR <1.1 M yr−1.

Figure 4.

Figure 4. Map of HAEs in A1689 from our census (green stars) and from the sample of Balogh et al. (2002, purple diamonds). Our HAEs are further organized by flux, with small and large symbols representing objects with log (f) < −16.0 and log (f) ⩾ −16.0, respectively. The HAEs are well distributed azimuthally, and appear to be underpopulated at smaller cluster-centric radii. The positions of cluster members with absorption redshifts from Duc et al. (2002), and the few that could be found in the literature, are indicated by the open squares and concentric squares, respectively. The canonical Einstein ring is indicated by the large black circle, with cluster center at "×."'

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The positions of the ELGs cover the far field reasonably well. Of the 30 HAEs comprising this sample plus those drawn from the literature, only one is located close in to the cluster center. This is a new ELG presented in this paper, ELG 4298/4251, which with i775 = 21.74 ± 0.01 is not reported in the large Hα survey of Balogh et al. (2002) as it is fainter than their I-band magnitude limit of 19.3. The preferential placement of HAEs in the cluster outskirts appears to satisfy the general trend of increasing star fraction as density decreases, and is biased as a result of confusion from a high source density in the cluster interior and small number statistics. It is interesting to note that there is an excess of galaxies detected at 100 μm with Herschel that is distributed as a swath running NE–SW across their field (Haines et al. 2010). Evidence of filamentary structure is not seen in our galaxy census which is less than one-tenth the field size of their sample.

4. F12_ELG1: THE GIANT ARC AT z = 0.7895

4.1. Galaxy Properties Measured from the HST Grism

The image and spatially resolved G800L spectra of F12_ELG1 with a visual extent of >8 arcsec and a magnification provided by the cluster of a factor of 4.5 appear in Figure 5. This is one of a handful of the brightest star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 1 (MB = −21.3), allowing for a study of one ELG in detail at intermediate redshift. The HST grism spectroscopy shows three separate ELSs as ELS 20002 ("A"), ELS 10638 ("B"), and ELS 10640 ("C"). Each ELS has at least two emission lines: [O ii] λλ3726, 3729 and [O iii] λλ4959, 5007, with the central knot "B" also showing Hβ line emission. The line fluxes and rest equivalent widths are given in Table 1. A fit to the line centroids of the emission features in Component A yields a redshift of z = 0.790, confirming the redshift in Duc et al. (2002). Knots A and B have a separation at the source of 1.5 kpc, while knots B and C are separated by only 0.5 kpc. There appear to be significant redshift differences between knots A, B, and C. These are likely to be owing to misidentification of the precise x position of the ELSs, which will translate into a wavelength error.

Figure 5.

Figure 5. i775 image and flux-normalized G800L spectra are shown for the bright giant arc F12_ELG1 at z = 0.790. The spatially resolved spectroscopy corresponds to the three sources of line emission along the long axis of this galaxy, ELS 20002 ("A"), ELS 10638 ("B"), and ELS 10640 ("C"). Components B and C are 0farcs27 apart, corresponding to an intrinsic separation of only 0.5 kpc. The flux of [O iii] relative to Hβ is highest in the center, and from follow-up spectroscopy we find a region near the center to be best fitted by an AGN (see Section 6.1 and Figure 9). The shift in the line peaks between components A, B, and C is a result of large uncertainties in the zero point of the wavelength solution. We detect emission in a second galaxy near in projection to F12_ELG1, labeled as ELS 2630 at z = 0.335.

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4.2. Galaxy Properties Measured from Ground-based Spectroscopy

In our Keck and Magellan spectra of F12_ELG1 we see line emission from star-forming regions across a continuous 4farcs From the 1D spectroscopy of this extended line emission we recover all the emission features of the HST grism spectrum and also detect additional ELs. We identify [O ii] λ3726, [O ii] λ3729, [O iii] λ4959, [O iii] λ5007, Hβ and Hγ, with Hδ, Hepsilon, H8, and [Ne iii] λ3869, and weak [C iii]/[C iv] λ4650 (in the Magellan spectrum). While the results are similar for our two ground-based data sets, we will focus primarily on the Keck spectrum herein with its higher spectral resolution and flux calibration taken with a standard star at the time of the observations. The line fluxes for the strong ELs for the Keck spectroscopy appear in Table 3.

Table 3. Intrinsic Fluxes for F12_ELG1

Line Line Fluxa
  (erg s−1 cm−2)
[O ii] 1.2+0.34−0.27 × 10−15
[O iii]b 1.8+0.17−0.32 × 10−15
[Ne iii] 6.0+0.12−4.2 × 10−17
c 3.0+1.1−1.2 × 10−16
c 1.0+1.0−0.88 × 10−16

Notes. aLine fluxes are measured from the Keck spectroscopy and are corrected for extinction and cluster magnification. b[O iii] λ4959 is contaminated by night sky lines, so we adopt the line ratio [O iii] λλ4959, 5007 = 1.3 × [O iii] λ5007. The flux value is taken from the Gaussian fit to the line. cBalmer line fluxes are additionally corrected for underlying stellar absorption.

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A Gaussian fit to [O ii] and [O iii] in our Keck spectrum yields a new systemic redshift of z = 0.7895. The line width is estimated from the fit to the [O iii] λ5007 line and is found to be Δv = 500 km s−1 after subtraction of the instrumental resolution. This is the line width set for all other emission features. To account for the slightly asymmetric line profile of the [O iii] λ5007 line owing to an adjacent sky line, the flux value is taken from the Gaussian fit rather than from the data values. The [O iii] λ4959 line also suffers from its unfortunate placement relative to a sky line. In this case the well-defined ratio of [O iii] λ5007 to [O iii] λ4959 of 3:1 is used for any calculations involving the sum of the fluxes or equivalent widths of these two lines. For all other line features, the values are measured directly from the data. The Balmer transition lines Hβ through H8 are shown in Figure 6. The velocity range over our 500 km s−1 measurement width is shown in blue and varies from −250 km s−1 < v < +250 km s−1 with reference to the systemic redshift of z = 0.7895. This large family of Balmer features all in emission is rare for an extragalactic source and signals the early stages of a major starburst.

Figure 6.

Figure 6. Stackplot of the Balmer family of emission lines for F12_ELG1, as labeled. Most notable is the rare detection of Balmer transmission lines continuously in emission from Hβ through H8, indicating a young starburst event. The continuum fit plus uncertainties are given by the red solid plus red dashed lines. The velocity range of the line (in blue) corresponds to −250 km s−1 < v < +250 km s−1 with reference to the systemic redshift of z = 0.7895. These data are from our Magellan follow-up spectroscopy and the units are in normalized counts. All spectra have been corrected for extinction by dust.

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Our Keck spectrum has at best only a slight continuum break at rest-frame 4000 Å. Balogh et al. (1999) define this break Dn(4000) as the ratio of the average flux density in the wavelength band 4000–4100 Å to the 3850–3950 Å band. We measure a break index of Dn(4000) = 0.96–1.0 after first masking out the strong [Ne iii] λ3869 and H8 ELs. This near lack of a continuum depression indicates a dominant population of hot young stars. The population synthesis models of Bruzual & Charlot (2003, hereafter BC03) provide a value of Dn(4000) for each spectral energy distribution (SED; see Section 4.3 for a description of our model). For a reasonable subset of models over four metallicities (0.2 Z, 0.4 Z, Z, and 2.5 Z) and a range of star formation histories, we have set an initial constraint on the age of the dominant stellar population of the galaxy to a range of 6 Myr ⩽t ⩽ 100 Myr. Note that any contribution from AGN continuum light would operate to raise the value for Dn(4000), and hence lead to an underestimate in the age of the galaxy (Kauffmann et al. 2003). We infer from spatially resolved analysis that this object is most likely dominated by star formation but also shows evidence of a harder ionizing source (see Section 6).

The [O ii] λλ3726, 3729 doublet is spectrally resolved in our Keck DEIMOS data, and this is useful as these are density-sensitive lines (Figure 7). The intensity ratio is measured to be 1.44, which for a typical temperature of T = 10,000–20,000 K equates to Ne = 980–1280 cm−3. This is a factor of ∼3 higher than the star-forming galaxies in the Kobulnicky & Kewley (2004) sample with 0.3<z < 1.0 and is consistent with ELG samples at z ∼ 2 (Lehnert et al. 2009; Hainline et al. 2009). These, and all other fluxes in this paper, are corrected for underlying stellar absorption, extinction by dust, and cluster magnification as described in Sections 4.3 and 5.

Figure 7.

Figure 7. Rest-frame resolved [O ii] λλ3726,3729 emission lines from F12_ELG1, with Gaussian fits to the features overlaid. The ratio of the relative strengths of the two lines allows the calculation of the electron density Ne = 980–1280 cm−3. These data are from our Keck DEIMOS follow-up spectroscopy.

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4.3. The SED, Underlying Stellar Absorption, and Reddening

The hydrogen Balmer features consist of both a nebular emission and a stellar absorption term. The ELs tend to weaken toward higher level transitions owing to the sum of a rapidly decreasing nebular EL strength with decreasing wavelength and an equivalent width of the stellar absorption component that at best increases only modestly with wavelength. To make a correction for the underlying stellar absorption we compute an intrinsic SED model template and then subtract it from the galaxy spectrum in a manner similar to that of Tremonti et al. (2004). We note that as our object is rare for showing Hβ through H8 all in emission, the underlying stellar absorption is not expected to be a major contaminant.

Our optical through infrared photometry is used to construct the matching SED model. We delens the photometry using a magnification factor of 4.5. The observed (unlensed) photometry of F12_ELG1 is as follows: U = 21.05 ± 0.16, B = 21.22 ± 0.17, V = 21.08 ± 0.15, g' = 21.06 ± 0.08, r' = 20.87 ± 0.01, i' = 20.56 ± 0.01, z' = 20.44 ± 0.01, P3.6 = 20.11 ± 0.07, and P4.5 = 20.46 ± 40.08. Our measurements of the Balmer decrement allow a bracketed range of model stellar ages 6 Myr<t <100 Myr (see Section 4.2). This constraint is in keeping with our detection of higher level Balmer ELs, as population synthesis models for star-forming galaxies predict for these features an increase with evolution up to 500 Myr (González Delgado et al. 1999). Our model-fitting approach allows for a range of metallicities and assumes a single starburst model with a range of decay rates τ and a star formation rate that depends exponentially on τ as follows: SFR(t)∝exp (t/τ). A summary of our parameter ranges is as follows:

  • 1.  
    τ = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, 1, and 5 Gyr;
  • 2.  
    t = 6–100 Myr;
  • 3.  
    Z = 0.2 Z, 0.4 Z, 1 Z, and 2.5 Z.

For each fixed τ, t, and Z, two parameters are fitted to the data: color excess E(BV) and stellar mass M*. A suite of models is constructed over the allowable parameter space, and each model is corrected for dust extinction. We compute synthetic photometry for comparison with the observed photometry until the lowest value of reduced χ2 is obtained, as is described in detail in Frye et al. (2008). Our best-fit model estimate yields E(BV) = 0.45 and M* = 2 × 109M for a young stellar age of t = 8 Myr, Z = 0.4 Z, and τ = 5 Gyr. After redshifting and binning to the correct spectral resolution, we measure a correction in rest-frame equivalent width of W = 1.5 Å for the Hβ line. All Balmer ELs include this correction for underlying stellar absorption. Our measured EL rest equivalent widths are too low to affect the SED fits, in contrast to the large equivalent widths found in Atek et al. (2011). Note although t is less than the estimated galaxy crossing time by a factor of ∼2, we find the BC03 models to provide an adequate fit to the data for our purposes of determining estimates for stellar absorption.

The attenuation of the intrinsic light due to dust is calculated from a standard curve, which for a starbursting galaxy is given in Calzetti et al. (2000), their Equation (4). Dust extinction is calculated using the Balmer decrement method, whereby a pair of ELs with a well-defined intrinsic ratio from atomic theory such as Balmer lines is compared with the data. We use Hβ and Hγ from our Keck data set, and attribute any deviation from the intrinsic value to dust. After correcting for the underlying stellar absorption, we measure f(Hγ)/f(Hβ) = 0.321. For an intrinsic ratio of f(Hγ)/f(Hβ) = 0.469 given by Osterbrock (1989), we compute E(BV)gas ≈ 0.78. This value is different from the color excess measured by SED fitting of E(BV) = 0.45. Some of this discrepancy is due to incomplete areal coverage of the galaxy image. We adopt the more general value measured from the SED modeling for this study.

4.4. Spectral Classification

The spectral classification of ELGs at low redshift can be determined from EL diagnostic diagrams such as the classical Baldwin, Phillips, & Terlevich (BPT) diagram (Baldwin et al. 1981). The BPT diagram is based in part on Hα and [N ii] lines which are redshifted out of the optical passband for z ⩾ 0.4. Classification systems based on bluer ELs are also well developed (Lamareille et al. 2004, 2009; Pérez-Montero et al. 2009; Lamareille 2010; Rola et al. 1997; Marocco et al. 2011). Marocco et al. (2011) revise the blue EL scheme of Lamareille (2010). Their samples are derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and do not include a correction for dust extinction.

We classify F12_ELG1 for our ACS grism (G800L) data set for which we have complete coverage of the emitting line region. We correct all fluxes for underlying stellar absorption and dust extinction and sum up the flux over all three ELSs. Under the Marocco et al. (2011) scheme, which involves the line ratios f ([O iii])/f ([Hβ]) and f ([O ii])/f ([Hβ]), F12_ELG1 is situated in the intermediate region that includes both star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and Seyfert 2 objects. In a different classification scheme, Pérez-Montero et al. (2009) use also the VVDS samples but instead consider the ratios of f ([O ii])/f (Hβ) and f ([Ne iii])/f (Hβ) after accounting for dust extinction. With this diagnostic set, F12_ELG1 is placed in a region that includes SFGs and the uncertainty domain between SFGs and AGNs.

The detection of additional spectral features similarly suggests that F12_ELG1 is in a position intermediate between star-forming and AGN source types. We detect [C iii]/[C iv] λ4650 commonly seen in AGNs and measure a flux ratio of [Ne iii]/Hβ ≈ 0.6, a value consistent with excitation by a hard ionizing source (Osterbrock 1989). At the same time we fail to detect [Ne v] λ3426 and [He iiλ4686], two ELs typically associated with AGNs, although the signal-to-noise is poor at the expected position of [Ne v] λ3426 owing to its placement on top of a strong sky line. Note the AGN diagnostic line [Ne v]λ3346 is blueward of our passband. As for the common nebular lines, the flux ratio f ([O iii])/f (Hβ) is low in the center, a trend that runs contrary to the expected behavior of a central AGN (Figure 5). Interestingly, the Balmer decrement is at best only marginally detected, which when used as an additional diagnostic places this object as an SFG for any value of [O ii] and [Ne iii] (Marocco et al. 2011). We conclude that there is at least a strong star-forming component to F12_ELG1, and that the AGN interpretation cannot be ruled out. We will use spatially resolved spectroscopy to address the possibility that this object supports AGN-like activity in Section 4.7.

4.5. Gas-phase Oxygen Abundance

The gas-phase oxygen abundance is estimated from the metallicity-sensitive rest-frame optical ELs. The direct measurement from the [O iii] λ4363 line typically seen in metal-poor galaxies is not detected in any of our spectroscopy. The indirect measurement using EL ratios involving Hα is redshifted out of our passband. From the available ELs we can compute R23 = ( f ([O ii] λ3727)+f ([O iii] λλ4959,5007))/f (Hβ) and O32 = ( f ([O iii] λ4959)+f ([O iii] λ5007))/f ([O ii]). R23 = 4.6+2.3−1.5 and O32 = 0.96+0.39−0.28 for the G800L data set and after first correcting all line fluxes for underlying stellar absorption, reddening, and cluster magnification. The uncertainties reflect 1σ errors in the noise and continuum placement.

The calculation of gas-phase oxygen abundances from R23 is complicated by its double-valued behavior, with a given value representing either the metal-poor lower branch, the metal-rich upper branch, or a transition at 12 + log (O/H) ≈ 8.4. We measure values for several empirical calibrations. Our value for R23 yields an abundance of 12 + log (O/H) = 8.1 (lower branch) and 8.9 (upper branch; Kobulnicky & Kewley 2004). For Tremonti et al. (2004) as adapted from the method of Charlot & Longhetti (2001) we obtain 12 + log (O/H) = 8.8 (upper branch). For Zaritsky et al. (1994) we measure 12 + log (O/H) = 8.8 (upper branch). Finally, we compute 12 + log (O/H) = 7.8 (lower branch) and 8.7 (upper branch) for McGaugh (1991) as given by Kobulnicky & Johnson (1999). F12_ELG1 is consistent with being on either branch.

Of the available emission features, the secondary indicator [Ne iii] can break the metallicity degeneracy (Nagao et al. 2006). We compute f ([Ne iii])/f ([O ii]) = 0.05+0.01−0.07, which has a best-fit polynomial correspondence value of 12 + log(O/H) = 8.8 ± 0.2. Our value is close to the solar value of 12 + log (O/H) = 8.66 (Allende Prieto et al. 2002; Asplund et al. 2004). It also overlaps with the range of values obtained from current metallicity history studies at z = 1–2 of 12 + log(O/H) = 8.3–9.0 (Lamareille et al. 2006; Liu et al. 2008; Hainline et al. 2009). In turn, all values are higher than those of direct measurements from strongly lensed high-z galaxies (Yuan & Kewley 2009; Rigby et al. 2011).

4.6. Star Formation Rate

We estimate the star formation rate in two ways: (1) by extrapolating the intrinsic Hβ line flux into an estimate of the Hα flux and (2) from the intrinsic (corrected for reddening and lensing magnification) [O ii] line flux. Although our observations do not cover the most reliable tracer of star formation, Hα, one can infer the Hα line flux from the E(BV) value and the intrinsic flux ratio between Hβ and Hα (Osterbrock 1989). We estimate the intrinsic fluxes for Hα to be f (Hα) = 1.4+0.53−0.61 × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2 and f (Hα) = 2.1+0.38−0.33 × 10−16 erg s−1 cm−2 for the Keck and HST G800L observations, respectively. The SFR can be measured using the relation starting from Kennicutt (1998): SFR(M yr−1) = 7.9 × 10−42f(Hα)*4πD2L erg s−1. For the Keck observations we measure SFR = 31+11−13M yr−1. For the HST G800L observations there is insufficient spectral resolution to detect Hβ in every ELS, making our value of SFR ≳ 6.5 M yr−1 a lower limit. We will adopt the value for the SFR from the Keck observations for this study.

Calibration of the star formation rate using the intrinsic [O ii] λ3727 line is more challenging, as it is more sensitive to reddening, metallicity, and ionization parameter. Kewley et al. (2004) present an algorithm that takes these dependencies into account, especially for high gas-phase oxygen abundances which apply to our case (log (O/H) + 12 > 8.4). Their Equation (14) for SFR is based on ionization parameter and gas-phase oxygen abundance. Using this equation yields SFR[O ii] ≈ 3 M yr−1 for the G800L grism data set, a value that is small compared to estimates based on Hβ flux. We will adopt the value for the SFR from the Hβ flux for this study as its relation to Hα is better understood, and plan to measure SFR directly by Hα in grism observations with VLT SINFONI in an upcoming paper. Finally, we compute sSFR ≈20 Gyr−1.

4.7. Spatial Trends in F12_ELG1

The image of this giant arc is noticeably bisected into a broad, line-emitting clump and a long extended tail. Line emission is detected only in the clump. We have spatially resolved spectroscopy with sufficient angular resolution to subdivide the line-emitting clump into seven contiguous bins of 0farcs6 each, or equivalently 1 kpc each after correcting for a magnification factor of 4.5. Each bin is assigned a different color. The bins have the following assignments: Bin 1 (purple), Bin 2 (rose), Bin 3 (lavender), Bin 4 (light green), Bin 5 (dark green), Bin 6 (olive), and Bin 7 (orange). We extract the seven spectra and compute line fluxes, line centroids, and velocity widths for common ELs. A sample stack plot centered on the position of Hβ in particular is shown in Figure 8, and an image of F12_ELG1 with the seven bins overlaid appears in the top panel of Figure 9.

Figure 8.

Figure 8. Spectra centered on the Hβ emission line are plotted for each of the seven slices in our spatially resolved Keck spectrum of F12_ELG1 at z = 0.7895. The colors are matched to the colors in Figure 9. The line fits are used to determine the central wavelengths and FWHMs. We find a small Doppler shift in the line centroid across the bins.

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Figure 9.

Figure 9. gri image of F12_ELG1 at z = 0.7895, with trends in the FWHM of a strong emission line and metallicity-dependent line ratios shown along the substructure of this giant arc. Each spatial bin covers 0farcs6 or ∼1 kpc (intrinsic). The FWHM peaks at Bin 2, which is taken to be the dynamical center. The metal fraction peaks in Bin 3, which is offset from the dynamical center. The metal line ratios in Bin 3 admit the possibility of an AGN. This asymmetrical AGN-like behavior may be a result of shocks in the direction of the long extended tail.

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The velocity dispersion σ is derived from the FWHM of the Hβ line and based on the assumption that the line width is set by the spread of velocities of the line emitting gas about the local central mass. The instrumental profile is subtracted off of the FWHM in quadrature, and then σ is computed as follows: FWHM/2.355*c/λobs. There should be a peak at the galaxy's center of mass if the object is supported by a central mass pulling on the stars. For F12_ELG1 the peak is at Bin 2, making this location the likely location for the galaxy nucleus (Figure 9). The uncertainties in σ come from continuum fitting and are less than the size of the plotting symbols. It is interesting that the Hβ line centroid blueshifts relative to the mean value along the galaxy, from Δv = +35 ± 5 km s−1 for Bin 1 to Δv = −13 ± 5 km s−1 in Bin 7. These results are similar to what is also seen across the lensed galaxy Lens22.3 at z = 1.7 (Yuan & Kewley 2009). From the velocity dispersion one can compute a rough value for the dynamical mass of ∼2 × 109M. This value is consistent with our estimated stellar galaxy mass from SED fitting. We measure MB = −22.2 and in turn obtain an estimate of the mass-to-light ratio of M/L ≈1. Our low measured M/L and stellar mass are consistent also with our stellar age by SED fitting of t = 8 Myr. This is similar to the work of van der Wel et al. (2005) who find a low M/L and low stellar mass at z ∼ 1 to be correlated with a young stellar age.

The trends of various metallicity-dependent line ratios across the galaxy are also shown in Figure 9. We retain the same bin coloring scheme and apply the same modest correction for stellar absorption and extinction to each bin as computed in Section 4.3. While the peak in the FWHM is at Bin 2, there is a temptation to find a peak over the metal line ratios at Bin 3, and a drop off to the left-hand side (Bins 1 and 2). We derive below a number of interesting results by a comparison of values in Bin 3 with the mean of Bins 1 and 2 (Bins 1–2). By Marocco et al. (2011) Bin 3 encompasses the composite star-forming galaxy (SFG)/Seyfert 2 and Seyfert 2-only regions of their f ([O iii]/Hβ) versus f ([O ii]/Hβ) H ii excitation diagram. Meanwhile Bins 1–2 yield a different result and reside entirely in the SFG/Seyfert 2 region. By the approach of Pérez-Montero et al. (2009), which includes [Ne iii], Bin 3 plus uncertainty region lies in the transition region between SFGs and AGNs, while Bins 1–2 plus uncertainty region lies entirely inside the SFG region. We conclude that the disky Bins 1–2 is consistent with an SFG while Bin 3 exhibits AGN-like behavior. These strong metal line ratios that are driven by a hard ionizing source and are offset by ∼1 kpc from the peak of the velocity dispersion appear to be best explained by shocks in the direction of the galaxy tail (Bins 4–7).

The values for [O iii]/Hβ are large all across the galaxy and are also higher in Bin 3 compared to Bins 1–2. In Bin 3 we measure log( f ([O iii])/f (Hβ)) = 0.49 ± 0.04. There is only a hint of a trend in the behavior of [Ne iii]/Hβ, but it is worth noting that [Ne iii]/Hβ is high in the central three bins, and for Bin 3 in particular the value is consistent with 0.4, a value commonly associated with AGNs (Osterbrock 1989). It is tempting to say the disky Bins 4–7 also show a decline from Bin 3, and if so then the various line ratios are not falling off as rapidly as in Bins 1–2. We speculate that there is a moderately elevated metal fraction in Bins 4–7 that may be a result of increased star formation activity in the direction of the galaxy tail, indicating possible harassment in the galaxy's star formation history.

If Bins 4–7 indeed lead toward a galaxy tail, then one can ask the question: which are the likely culprits for past interactions? F12_ELG1 has neighbors roughly centered in redshift at the systemic redshift of z = 0.7895. There are seven galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts of 0.7625 <z < 0.8175 distributed over a field in the image plane of ≈3.5 arcmin on a side, which for a mean magnification of ∼4 × yields a physical size in the source plane of 0.8 Mpc. This structure or filament may contribute to the compound lensing effect at the 1'' level that is important for doing precision cosmology with clusters (Jullo et al. 2010).

4.8. Evolution of F12_ELG1

In sum, with its high sSFR corresponding roughly to a cold gas fraction of ∼0.7 (Reddy et al. 2005), its low mass, and the presence of many Balmer series ELs, this strongly lensed but otherwise ordinary galaxy would appear to be caught at the beginning of a major burst of star formation. This is consistent with the picture of van der Wel et al. (2011) in which ∼1/2 the stars in a typical field galaxy are formed in only ∼2–3 bursts that produce the stellar population in an M* = 109M by z ∼ 1. F12_ELG1 also looks similar to the objects in Kriek et al. (2009) that are AGN hosts of size ∼1 kpc.

F12_ELG1 has similar ionization properties compared to other z = 1–2 star-forming galaxies, and as a group such objects have elevated ionizations compared to the local galaxy population. It is thought that galaxy feedback must play a role in understanding these differences. One possible explanation is that many intermediate-redshift galaxies may harbor weak AGNs (Wright et al. 2010; Trump et al. 2011). F12_ELG1 has elevated metal-line ratios consistent with an AGN that are interestingly offset from the dynamical center of the galaxy. Given this extended tail in the same direction, we interpret the asymmetrically situated AGN-like region of this galaxy as shock excitation, possibly as a result of a past galaxy interaction. The line ratios decrease toward the outer disk on both sides of the peak in this one galaxy, similar to the spatially resolved spectroscopy of another giant arc at intermediate redshift, the "Clone" (Jones et al. 2010). By contrast, in a sample of 50 intermediate-redshift ELGs with integral field unit spectroscopy a significant fraction showed the opposite trend (Queyrel et al. 2012).

5. CLUSTER LENSING

A1689 is one of the best studied clusters in the literature, with several published lens models (Broadhurst et al. 2005; Limousin et al. 2007; Halkola et al. 2006; Leonard et al. 2007; Zekser et al. 2006; Coe et al. 2010). In this work, we adopt the model presented in Broadhurst et al. (2005), which is constructed from 30 multiply imaged galaxies with supporting multiband photometry of the field and spectroscopy of a representative sample of the arcs. The Broadhurst et al. (2005) model compares favorably with measurements using an independent model from the literature (Limousin et al. 2007).

We use our lens model for A1689 to construct an azimuthally averaged magnification profile to predict source magnifications (μ) owing to strong lensing. We measure the magnification straightforwardly by tabulating a grid from the best-fitting magnification map that spans roughly the ACS field of view (190'' on a side). Our resulting magnification profile is shown in Figure 10, corresponding to the measured mean redshift of background objects in the field drawn from the literature (Frye et al. 2007, and references therein).

Figure 10.

Figure 10. Radial magnification profiles for the average magnification inside a circle of radius R (dashed line), and the median magnification in an annulus of 2farcs5 about R (continuous line) assuming in each case a mean source redshift of z = 0.8 as drawn from the literature (Frye et al. 2007). The primary and secondary peaks appear at the locations of the tangential and radial critical curves, respectively. The net advantage of this lensed field is a factor of ∼4 integrated over a large R = 150'' (0.5 Mpc) radius.

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The median magnification (μ) peaks at μ = 35 and has a long tail extending toward large radial distances. We report the median magnifications rather than the mean magnifications so as not to include the high model magnifications exceeding μ = 100. The magnification of both curves is high outside the tangential critical curve of 50'', even out to large radii of R = 150'' (≈0.5 Mpc), where the median absolute magnification is μ ≈ 4. Given this magnification profile, all the sources in our catalog and behind the cluster are likely magnified. The magnification is computed in detail for two giant arcs of interest below.

The magnification contours for F12_ELG1 are laid down onto the HST gri image in Figure 11. The contours increase in the direction of the two massive cluster ellipticals appearing just above the "×10" magnification label and in the upper left-hand corner of the image. We compute a magnification that increases from a factor of four to five along the long axis of the arc, with a mean value that we use for this paper of μ = 4.5. This value supercedes a previous measurement (Frye et al. 2002), as this one is derived explicitly from the lens model. No counterarcs are predicted for this arc, which is not situated close the expected positions of the critical curves. The reconstructed source plane image shows one bright compact region of size ∼1'' and an extended tail.

Figure 11.

Figure 11. Left-hand side: two-dimensional magnification map of the lens A1689 (contours) overlaid on the gri image of the blue giant arc at z = 0.7895. The linear magnification varies differentially from μ = 4 to 5 along the arc, enhanced locally by the nearby cluster elliptical at right. Seven non-overlapping bins of substructure are overlaid as colored rectangles in both the image and source planes. The bins are oriented and have a size corresponding to the position angle and slit width of the observations. Right-hand side: the reconstructed source plane image yields a single nucleus with an extension that may be a tidal tail.

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6. OTHER FIELD GALAXIES

6.1. Double-peaked Hα in F12_ELG2

We report new ELSs detected with the ACS G800L grism which have close angular separations. They are ELS 20004 "A" and ELS 11085 "B" (Figure 12). We designate this group of sources as "F12_ELG2." Sources A and B have an angular separation of ≈0farcs21 and are resolved despite the angular separation being slightly smaller than our predicted spatial resolution of R0 = 0farcs25, set by our algorithm that extracts a minimum of five spatial pixels centered on an EL. The spectrum for component A shows two EL peaks with similar flux amplitudes. The spectrum for component B shows a single EL with an extended red tail that appears to be associated with at least some of the same emission sources as in component A (Figure 13).

Figure 12.

Figure 12. Image in i775 of F12_ELG2 (center). The inset image is a close-up of the region indicated by the dotted lines that contains two emission line sources (ELS 20004 "A" and ELS 11085 "B"). ELSs A and B have a close angular separation of θ ≈ 0farcs2, and other knots are also detected in the vicinity of this elliptical galaxy. We show the grism spectroscopy in Figure 13.

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Figure 13.

Figure 13. Spectra of F12_ELG2, which contain new ELSs at close angular separations: ELS 20004 "A," ELS 11085 "B," and "G" (see Figure 12 for the image). From the line placements and separations we infer there to be one emission line for each of the three components. The spectrum in the top panel is remarkable for showing a double-peaked emission line profile with a large peak-to-peak velocity difference of ∼9600 km s−1 and line strengths of roughly equal amplitude. Component G shows an underlying stellar continuum. Most likely A and G are at z = 0.532 while A is at z = 0.560, although additional data are required to confirm these line identifications for this complex system of ELSs.

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Emission peaks B and G both have line emission at the same wavelength (see 2D spectrum in Figure 13). In addition, component G shows extended emission, making it the source likely to be most sensitive to the photometric redshift estimate. The photometric redshift for G is zBPZ = 0.480 ± 0.145, from which we consider the peak "B+G" as [O iii] at z = 0.532. As it is unlikely for components B and G to have the same wavelength peak but be unrelated, we take this as the redshift for both components. The morphology of the galaxy nearest to the sources is an elliptical which is likely component G (see Figure 12). From profile fitting we do not find associated Hβ. Our double-peaked spectrum (A+G) has a peak-to-peak velocity separation of ∼9600 km s−1. From this remarkably high value we can rule out the interpretation of this object as two separate ELSs close in space. Most likely, G and B are both at z = 0.532, while A is an unrelated source at z = 0.560. It is also possible that source A and/or B are situated behind the elliptical galaxy, which would alter the above redshift identifications. Additional spectroscopy is required at a competitive spatial resolution to identify these emission features and objects.

6.2. High-z Population

We detect the highest redshift object with a published spectrum in the A1689 field, ELG 10399 at z = 5.13 (Frye et al. 2002). Our grism spectrum is shown in the upper panel of Figure 14. This arclet is faint (iAB = 25.85 ± 0.18) and extremely red (gi > 4), yet is detected in our rather shallow grism survey owing to its large rest-frame equivalent width (Wr = 29.7+13.29−4.6), its high magnification, and its small size of 1'' (Figure 14). We compute a magnification of μ ≈ 4.5 and estimate an intrinsic size for its redshift of ≈1 kpc. There are no counterarcs predicted for this arclet. We identify the lone EL to be Lyα based on our higher resolution companion spectrum taken with Keck LRIS (blue dashed line) which shows also a Lyman-series break. With its high rest equivalent width of Wr > 20, this object would appear from the grism spectrum alone to be an Lyα emitter, but our Keck spectrum shows it to have a Lyman-break seen against stellar continuum.

Figure 14.

Figure 14. gri image and spectra of ELG 10399 at z = 5.13 (i775 = 25.58 ± 0.18). A Lyman-series break is clearly detected together with a prominent asymmetric emission line which we take to be Lyα from our Keck LRIS observations (lower spectrum). Our grism results are also shown (upper spectrum). Two other ELSs from our sample appear in the field. One is ELS 1184 at z = 0.054 and the other is ELS 1157 at z = 0.195 as marked. Spectroscopic redshifts of other objects in the field known from the literature are marked.

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Of the six galaxies in the field of A1689 with z >2.5 (Table 4), interestingly only this one galaxy at z = 5.13 enters into our sample. The Sextet arcs at z = 3.038 are not detected, which is not surprising given that the arclet in this sextuply imaged system with the strongest line emission has an Lyα total of Wr = 4+1.5−5.0 Å, a value in the lowest single percentile of our sample. It is less well understood why the bright arclet at z = 4.868 is not detected. This arclet image has i775 = 23.48 ± 0.03, an angular size of ∼1farcs3, an Lyα EL with Wr = 12.4+8.83−3.84 Å (the lowest 10% of our sample), and is situated in a relatively uncrowded location relative to the cluster members. Note we do not see any lone unassociated ELs of other faint, potentially high-redshift objects near to the locations of the tangential critical curve.

Table 4. Objects with Spectroscopy at z > 2.5 in the A1689 Field

R.A. Decl. Redshift Image Sizea Intrinsic Sizeb i775 WLyα Ref.
(hr) (○)   ('') (h−1 kpc) (AB) (Å)  
13.190701 −1.3320694 3.038 1.3 0.08 23.07 ± 0.01 4.0+1.5−5.0 c, d
13.190681 −1.3324306 3.038 2.2 1.1 22.40 ± 0.01 −26−5.4+1.7 c, d
13.192517 −1.3409444 3.038 0.75 0.73 24.02 ± 0.01 −4.0−1.5+11.5 c, d
13.191649 −1.3207361 3.770 2.3 0.22 24.13 ± 0.90 ⩽3.3 d, e
13.190402 −1.3477333 4.868 1.3 0.13 23.48 ± 0.03 12.4+8.83−3.84 d, e, f
13.193053 −1.3308528 5.120 0.64 ∼1 25.58 ± 0.18 29.7+13.29−4.6 d, e, g

Notes. aImage size is measured from the HST ACS i775 image directly, without applying a lensing correction factor. bLinear size is computed from the image size, given a lensing magnification factor and our adopted cosmology. cBroadhurst et al. (2005). dFrye et al. (2007). eFrye et al. (2002). fFrye et al. (2008). gThis paper.

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7. SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK

We have undertaken a census of ELGs in the central portion of A1689 comprising three orbits and a single pointing with the HST ACS G800L grism. This is the first grism survey with HST in the field of a massive lensing cluster. We summarize the main results below.

  • 1.  
    We present a spectroscopic catalog (Table 1) which contains 66 ELs in 52 EL sources in 43 galaxies in this flux-limited sample with i775 ≲ 27.3. Three-quarters of the galaxy identifications are new, and one-quarter of the spectra show a single EL with a large rest equivalent width (∼100 Å).
  • 2.  
    We report the discovery of F12_ELG1 at z = 0.7895, whose spectrum shows several Balmer ELs indicative of a starburst phase for this young, low-mass galaxy with ∼solar metallicity and M/L ≈ 1. Offset from the galaxy nucleus by ∼1 kpc we measure metal line ratios that are consistent with the presence of an AGN, a result that is not apparent in the integrated spectrum. We interpret the presence of a harder ionization source outside the galaxy nucleus to be a result of shocks, possibly induced by a recent galaxy interaction.
  • 3.  
    We compute magnification factors for some individual galaxies. We construct a magnification profile for the cluster and measure a cumulative benefit due to lensing of a factor of 3.75 within the central ≈500 kpc.
  • 4.  
    We have detected the highest redshift galaxy with spectroscopic confirmation, ELG 10399 at z = 5.13, and we report the discovery of several other objects, including F12_ELG2 with multiple sources of emission at close angular separations.

Given their high magnifications over large areas, grism surveys in the fields of massive lensing clusters are rich yet relatively unexplored territories. In particular, lensing can open up the discovery space for galaxies with weak Wr EL sources. For the typical galaxy in the background of the cluster, lensing causes both the galaxy's extended stellar continuum to be diluted and the star-forming regions to be magnified but remain unresolved. This lensing effect allows the detection threshold to be lowered to include weaker Wr ELSs. The exquisite spatial resolution of HST further allows for multiple weak ELSs to be identified in each ELG. Operationally, such programs are free of lengthy selection algorithms, and so can yield rewards even with only modest investments of telescope time.

ACS. was developed under NASA contract NAS 5-32865, and this research has been supported in part by NASA grant NAG5-7697 and by an equipment grant from Sun Microsystems, Inc. B.L.F. acknowledges generous hospitality at the SUNY Stony Brook Astronomy Group. D.V.B. is funded through NASA Long-Term Space Astrophysics grant NNG05GE26G. We are grateful to Sangeeta Malhotra and James Rhoads for providing useful follow-up spectroscopy on Magellan Observatories. We thank Holland Ford, Rogier Windhorst, Nicole Nesvadba, Jean-Paul Kneib, and Maruša Bradač for useful discussions. Some data for this work were acquired at Keck Observatories. We also want to express our appreciation to the anonymous referee whose comments and suggestions improved the clarity of this paper. The authors wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain we are privileged to be guests. Without their generous hospitality, some of the observations presented herein would not have been possible.

APPENDIX: THE CATALOG

In each ELG we detect at least one ELS with one or more ELs. In all we identify 66 ELs in 52 ELSs in 43 ELGs. A color–magnitude diagram of our sample is shown in Figure 15 (red star-shaped symbols), with the green diamond-shaped symbols indicating the positions of cluster members obtained by photometric redshifts. The black triangle-shaped symbols show all objects in the field with measured photometric redshifts. Most objects in our sample have colors bluer than the cluster sequence, corresponding to roughly gi = 1.7 at i775 = 20. All nine Hα emitters (HAEs) in our sample that are cluster members are also situated below the cluster sequence. Four ELGs are situated exactly on the cluster sequence. These are not cluster members and are identified as follows: ELG 11186 (HAE at z = 0.235), ELG 10746 (HAE at z = 0.230), ELG 10226 (HAE at z = 0.140), and ELG 4277 (HAE at z = 0.462). Of these, ELG 11186 and ELG 10746 are very close to the cluster and may be foreground galaxies experiencing infall into the cluster gravitational potential well. The three ELGs above the cluster sequence are ELG 10399 at z = 5.12 with a lower limit of gi = 4, the disk galaxy ELG 1077 at z = 0.595 with gi = 2.24, and the faint and compact object ELG 6621 at z = 0.800 with gi = 1.48.

Figure 15.

Figure 15. Color–magnitude diagram for HST ACS g475 and i775 in AB magnitudes. Objects in our ELG sample are indicated by the red star-shaped symbols and compared with other objects, including photometric redshifts for cluster members (green diamond-shaped symbols) and photometric for all other objects (black triangle-shaped symbols). The typical ELG in our sample is bluer than the cluster. The red arrow shows the lower limit in (gi) for the g-band dropout galaxy at z = 5.13, ELG 10399.

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The spectroscopic results appear in Table 1 with the following columns: object name, right ascension and declination, i775 (AB) magnitude, EL central wavelength, EL flux, total rest-frame equivalent width and 1σ errors, line identification, spectroscopic redshift, and a reference to any redshifts in the literature determined spectroscopically. Eight line species are identified in our sample: [S ii] λλ6716,6731, Hα, [O iii] λλ4959,5007, Hβ, [Ne iii] λ3867, He iλ4472, [O ii] λλ3727,3729, and Lyα. The three doublets in this line list are unresolved at our spectral resolution, so we adopt the following vacuum rest wavelengths for their flux-weighted centroids: λ0([S ii]) = 6723.5 Å, λ0([O iii]) = 4996.5 Å, and λ0([O ii]) = 3728.7 Å. Two people independently measured the rest-frame equivalent widths (Wr) and found consistent results. The uncertainties reported for the line fluxes are 1σ errors including continuum placement and photon noise. More than one-quarter of our ELGs have large rest equivalent widths, Wr > 100 Å.

A.1. Line Identifications

Previously published redshifts are the first resource for line identifications. For new ELGs, the objects with multiple ELs make the redshift determination straightforward, taking into account the cases of similar ratios of wavelengths between line pairs, such as the similar line ratios of λHα/λ[O iii] and λHβ/λ[O ii] (M07). The remainder of the catalog consists of single ELs. Single ELs present challenges as grism observations are not sensitive to small-scale changes that can serve as redshift-confirming features, such as strong absorption bands and the line shape of ELs closely separated in velocity space. The treatment of single ELs relies on the combination of photometric redshift, profile fitting, and other sanity checks such as the search for continuum depressions and the absence of conflicting emission features. The photometric redshift is derived from a Bayesian approach, described in detail in other papers (Benítez 2000; Benítez et al. 2004; Coe et al. 2006); it is measured including nine bands and found to be a robust redshift indicator (see Figure 9 in Frye et al. 2007). We fit profiles to distinguish secondary bumps in our single ELs to corroborate the likelihood of, for example, a bona fide [O iii]/Hβ detection. When one EL is observed, the photometric redshift is used to resolve the degenerate possible redshift solutions, resulting in a much more accurate redshift than from the photometry alone.

The largest source of uncertainty is in establishing the goodness of fit of the zero point of the wavelength solution. In our blind EL finding technique, ELs are identified and the offset of the position between the EL and the direct source is computed. The goodness of fit can be measured by comparing the grism and spectroscopic redshifts. From previous studies involving similar data sets and reduction techniques as described in M07, the scatter in grism and spectroscopic redshifts is equivalent to an error in position of ∼1 pixel, or Δv = 1650 km s−1. In addition, the spectral resolution is low, with R = 90 at λ = 8500 Å, corresponding to Δv = 3300 km s−1 or about 2.1 pixels. While in practice this means that we will have relatively little leverage on measuring kinematics of gas clouds within a disk, the grism has the advantage of obtaining spectroscopy that is spatially resolved on impressively small angular scales of ∼0farcs2

A.2. Line Demographics

We compare line properties sorted by the three most common line species, Hα, [O iii], and [O ii] (Table 5), and compare these results with a recent HST ACS grism survey in an unlensed field to similar depth, the HDF grism survey (M07). By line species, Hα emitters are plentiful despite the small sample volume owing to the field selection of a massive galaxy cluster. The median redshift for our sample of HAEs of z = 0.22 is close to the cluster redshift of z = 0.187 and is dominated by galaxies in the cluster. We measure the median Wrs to be W = 29.3 Å, W[O iii]= 67.2 Å, and W[O ii] = 29.6 Å. These values are large, but typical of grism surveys.

Table 5. Properties of ELSs by Line Species

  [O iii] [O ii]
Number of ELSs 21a 27b 9c
Mean z 0.22 0.51 0.92
Mean MB −18.1 −18.6 −20.8
Mean Wrd (Å) 40.4 170 137

Notes. aThere are 18 ELGs that are Hα emitters. bThere are 22 ELGs that are [O iii] emitters. cThere are seven ELGs that are [O ii] emitters. dGiven large uncertainties in the background subtraction, we report Wrs for only 23 [O iii] emitters.

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The largest difference between this sample and the HDF is in the values of the Wr. One-quarter of all of the emitters in our sample have Wr ⩾ 100 Å, compared to three-quarters for the comparison sample (HDF-N, M07). Also, the median Wr for each line species is smaller than the values in the comparison sample (Figure 16). The largest shift is found for the HAEs, which are dominated by galaxies in or near to this old and presumably relaxed cluster (z = 0.19). Interestingly, all of the HAEs in our sample that are brighter than the magnitude limit of the large EL survey of Balogh et al. (2002) of I = 19.3 are recovered in our census. Moreover, all of the HAEs in our sample that are fainter than their limiting magnitude are new to the literature. Thus, we find the slitless grism observing approach to be especially sensitive to the detection of low-luminosity (and largely unlensed) HAEs with low SFRs. On the other hand, the shift in the [O iii] and [O ii] emitters toward lower Wrs is due to lensing. Lensing boosts the brightnesses and sizes of the background objects, including the ELs, with the effect of improving the signal-to-noise of the grism spectra. This effect enables the identification of weaker ELs with smaller Wrs and lower SFRs than are found in the field. We compute rest-frame B-band magnitudes, MB, by fitting a Bruzual–Charlot model to our optical ACS photometry, and then computing the k-correction onto a Johnson B-band filter template. The mean MB for the 27 [O iii] emitters is fainter than for the HDF by 1.5 mag, yielding yet another indication of the gravitational lensing effect. The shift is not seen for the 21 Hα emitters or nine [O ii] emitters which is dominated by emitters inside the cluster lens and small number statistics, respectively.

Figure 16.

Figure 16. Total rest-frame equivalent width (Wr) (Å) of each emission line in our catalog is plotted as a histogram for all objects, and then also for the three most common line species of Hα, [O ii], and [O iii]. The results for this sample appear in black in the lower row of each panel and the grism sample of the HDF-N (M07) in gray in the upper row. Our lensed sample includes more weak Wr sources of line emission. The effect of lensing is to boost the flux of the unresolved emission lines with respect to the stretched and diluted stellar continuum, thereby increasing the signal-to-noise and allowing for lower Wr detection thresholds.

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A.3. Special Cases

Seven ELs flagged by our purpose-built reduction code were later removed as bogus detections. In five cases, the lines were weak and other available spectroscopic data ruled out the grism features as ELs. In two cases, the continuum shapes mimicked an EL but turned out to be stellar continuum. There are three cases for which the EL redshifts are not consistent with published redshifts: ELS 1184, ELS 11324, and ELG 6621. We discuss these cases below.

  • 1.  
    ELS 1184 is in a crowded environment and is separated by only 1farcs8 from ELS 1157 (see upper left of Figure 14). ELS 1157 has multiple emission features confirming the redshift of z = 0.195 for this previously identified object (Balogh et al. 2002; Duc et al. 2002). ELS 1184 has a single EL at 6917 Å that we do not identify with any strong emission feature at or near to z ∼ 0.195. We adopt the foreground redshift z = 0.054 for this compact and very bright ELS based on the absence of other expected ELs in the bandpass were the identifications to correspond to [O iii] or [O ii]. We measure a photometric redshift for the Sc galaxy of zBPZ = 0.320 ± 0.129, but this measurement is taken at the position of ELS 1157.
  • 2.  
    ELG 11324 is in the crowded outer regions of an extended face-on spiral galaxy with a photometric redshift of zBPZ = 0.250+0.2600.122 and a spectroscopic redshift of z = 0.384 (J. Richard 2011, private communication). We detect a single EL at 6913.5 Å which we take to be [O iii] at the spectroscopic redshift.
  • 3.  
    ELG 6621 is small and faint, with a magnified size of 0farcs3 and i775 = 26.7. The grism spectrum shows a lone EL at 6712.4 Å with stellar continuum and no salient continuum features. This galaxy suffers from crowding by a second object that is confidently identified from our companion Magellan spectrum as ELG 6621a at z = 0.1868. ELG 6621a is a cluster member that is not detected in our grism data set and that has no feature at the position of the grism EL. The photometric redshift for ELG 6621 is zBPZ = 3.780 ± 0.468. If the EL in ELG 6621 is Lyα then the redshift is z = 4.52, and we cannot rule out the possibility of high redshift at least according the redshift test available to us (Rhoads et al. 2009). The high-redshift scenario would seem unlikely given that the photometry does not correct for extinction at the cluster redshift, and thus we must attribute some of its "redness" to its being behind the foreground cluster member. Strictly, the EL can be also Hα, [O ii], or [O iii]. If the line is [O iii] then z = 0.346, in which case we do not detect the non-requisite Hβ EL. Based on the large observed equivalent width of 772.9 ± 497.9 we adopt a line identification of [O ii] at z = 0.800, and admit this as an uncertain redshift in our sample. Note ELG 6621a is detected only in our Magellan spectrum and so does not appear in Table 1.

Footnotes

  • Based, in part, on data obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

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10.1088/0004-637X/754/1/17