Examinando por Autor "Cullen, F."
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Ítem Insights into the reionization epoch from cosmic-noon-Civ emitters in the VANDELS survey(EDP Sciences, 2023-05) Mascia, S.; Pentericci, L.; Saxena, A.; Belfiori, D.; Calabrò, A.; Castellano, M.; Saldana-Lopez, A.; Talia, M.; Amorín, R.; Cullen, F.; Garilli, B.; Guaita, L.; Llerena, M.; McLure, R.J.; Moresco, M.; Santini, P.; Schaerer, D.Recently, intense emission from nebular CaIII] and CIV emission lines have been observed in galaxies in the epoch of reionization (z > 6) and have been proposed as the prime way of measuring their redshift and studying their stellar populations. These galaxies might represent the best examples of cosmic reionizers, as suggested by recent low-z observations of Lyman continuum emitting galaxies, but it is hard to directly study the production and escape of ionizing photons at such high redshifts. The ESO spectroscopic public survey VANDELS offers the unique opportunity to find rare examples of such galaxies at cosmic noon (z∼ 3), thanks to the ultra deep observations available. We have selected a sample of 39 galaxies showing CIV emission, whose origin (after a careful comparison to photoionization models) can be ascribed to star formation and not to active galactic nuclei. By using a multiwavelength approach, we determined their physical properties including metallicity and the ionization parameter and compared them to the properties of the parent population to understand what the ingredients are that could characterize the analogs of the cosmic reionizers. We find that CIV emitters are galaxies with high photon production efficiency and there are strong indications that they might also have a large escape fraction: given the visibility of CIV in the epoch of reionization, this could become the best tool to pinpoint the cosmic reioinzers. © The Authors 2023.Ítem The environmental dependence of the stellar and gas-phase mass-metallicity relation at 2 < z < 4(EDP Sciences, 2022-08-01) Calabrò, A.; Guaita, L.; Pentericci, L.; Fontanot, F.; Castellano, M.; De Lucia, G.; Garofalo, T.; Santini, P.; Cullen, F.; Carnall, A.; Garilli, B.; Talia, M.; Cresci, G.; Franco, M.; Fynbo, J.P.U.; Hathi, N.P.; Hirschmann, M.; Koekemoer, A.; Llerena, M.; Xie, L.In the local universe, galaxies in clusters typically show different physical and chemical properties compared to more isolated systems. Understanding how this difference originates, and whether it is already in place at high redshift, is still a matter of debate. Thanks to uniquely deep optical spectra available from the VANDELS survey, we investigate environmental effects on the stellar mass- metallicity relation (MZR) for a sample of nearly 1000 star-forming galaxies in the redshift range 2 < z < 4. We complement our dataset with the MOSFIRE follow-up of 21 galaxies to study the environmental dependence of the gas-phase MZR. Robust stellar and gas-phase metallicities are derived from well-calibrated photospheric absorptions features, respectively at 1501 and 1719Å in the stacked spectra, and from optical emission lines ([OII]λ λ3726-3729, [OIII] λ5007, and Hβ) in individual systems.We characterize the environment through multiple criteria by using the local galaxy density maps derived in the VANDELS fields to identify overdense structures and protoclusters of varying sizes. We find that environmental effects are weak at redshifts 2 < z < 4, and they are more important around the densest overdensity structures and protoclusters, where galaxies have a lower stellar metallicity (by ∼0:2 dex) and a lower gas-phase metallicity (by 0.1 dex) compared to the field, with a significance of 1σ and 2σ, respectively. Crucially, this downward offset cannot be explained by a selection effect due to a higher star formation rate, a fainter UV continuum, or different dust attenuations and stellar ages for galaxies in overdense enviroments with respect to the field. In spite of the still low signal-to-noise ratio of our results, we consider possible explanations of this environmental dependence. We propose a combination of increased mergers and high-speed encounters, more efficient AGN feedback in dense cores, and cold gas inflows from the cosmic web as viable physical mechanisms diluting the metal content of the cold gas reservoirs of overdense galaxies or expelling their metals to the intergalactic medium, even though additional studies are needed to determine the most significant scenario. Finally, some tensions remain between observations and both semi-analytic models and hydrodynamical simulations, which predict no significant metallicity offset as a function of host halo mass, suggesting that an explicit implementation of environmental processes in dense protocluster cores is needed. © ESO 2022.Ítem The NIRVANDELS Survey: a robust detection of α-enhancement in star-forming galaxies at z 3.4(Oxford University Press, 2021-05) Cullen, F.; Shapley, A.; McLure, R.; Dunlop, J.S; Sanders, R.L; Topping, M.W; Reddy, N.A; Amorin, R.; Begley, R.; Bolzonella, M.; Calabro, A.; Carnall, A.C; Castellano, M.; Cimatti, A.; Cirasuolo, M.; Cresci, G.; Fontana, A.; Fontanot, F.; Garilli, B.; Guaita, L.; Hamadouche, M.; Hathi, N.P; Mannucci, F.; McLeod, D. J; Pentericci, L.; Saxena, A.; Talia, M.; Zamorani, G.We present results from the NIRVANDELS survey on the gas-phase metallicity (Zg, tracing O/H) and stellar metallicity (Z∗, tracing Fe/H) of 33 star-forming galaxies at redshifts 2.95 < z < 3.80. Based on a combined analysis of deep optical and near-IR spectra, tracing the rest-frame far-ultraviolet (FUV; 1200-2000 Å) and rest-frame optical (3400-5500 Å), respectively, we present the first simultaneous determination of the stellar and gas-phase mass-metallicity relationships (MZRs) at z ≃ 3.4. In both cases, we find that metallicity increases with increasing stellar mass (M∗) and that the power-law slope at M∗ ≤ 1010M⊙ of both MZRs scales as Z ∝ M∗0.3. Comparing the stellar and gas-phase MZRs, we present direct evidence for super-solar O/Fe ratios (i.e. α-enhancement) at z > 3, finding (O/Fe) = 2.54 ± 0.38 × (O/Fe)⊙, with no clear dependence on M∗. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.Ítem The VANDELS ESO public spectroscopic survey: The spectroscopic measurements catalogue(EDP Sciences, 2023-10-01) Talia, M.; Schreiber, C.; Garilli, B.; Pentericci, L.; Pozzetti, L.; Zamorani, G.; Cullen, F.; Moresco, M.; Calabrò, A.; Castellano, M.; Fynbo, J.P.U.; Guaita, L.VANDELS is a deep spectroscopic survey, performed with the VIMOS instrument at VLT, aimed at studying in detail the physical properties of high-redshift galaxies. VANDELS targeted 2100 sources at 1 < z < 6.5 in the CANDELS Chandra Deep-Field South (CDFS) and Ultra-Deep Survey (UDS) fields. In this paper, we present the public release of the spectroscopic measurement catalogues from this survey, featuring emission and absorption line centroids, fluxes, and rest-frame equivalent widths obtained through a Gaussian fit, as well as a number of atomic and molecular indices (e.g. Lick) and continuum breaks (e.g. D4000), and including a correction to be applied to the error spectra. We describe the measurement methods and the validation of the codes that were used. © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.Ítem The VANDELS survey: the ionizing properties of star-forming galaxies at 3 ≤ z ≤ 5 using deep rest-frame ultraviolet spectroscopy(Oxford University Press, 2023-07-01) Saldana-Lopez, A.; Schaerer, D.; Chisholm, J.; Calabrò, A.; Pentericci, L.; Cullen, F.; Saxena, A.; Amorín, R.; Carnall, A.C.; Fontanot, F.; Fynbo, J.P.U.; Guaita, L.; Hathi, N.P.; Hibon, P.; Ji, Z.; McLeod, D.J.; Pompei, E.; Zamorani, G.The physical properties of Epoch of Reionization (EoR) galaxies are still poorly constrained by observations. To better understand the ionizing properties of galaxies in the EoR, we investigate deep, rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) spectra of ≃500 star-forming galaxies at 3 ≤ z ≤ 5 selected from the public ESO-VANDELS spectroscopic survey. The absolute ionizing photon escape fraction (fescabs, i.e. the ratio of leaking against produced ionizing photons) is derived by combining absorption line measurements with estimates of the UV attenuation. The ionizing production efficiency (ξion, i.e. the number of ionizing photons produced per non-ionizing UV luminosity) is calculated by fitting the far-UV (FUV) stellar continuum of the VANDELS galaxies. We find that the fescabs and ξion parameters increase towards low-mass, blue UV-continuum slopes and strong Ly α emitting galaxies, and both are slightly higher-than-average for the UV-faintest galaxies in the sample. Potential Lyman Continuum Emitters (LCEs, fescabs ≥ 5 per cent) and selected Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs, WLyα ≤ −20 Å) show systematically higher ξion (log ξion(Hz erg−1) ≈ 25.38, 25.41) than non-LCEs and non-LAEs (log ξion(Hz erg−1) ≈ 25.18, 25.14) at similar UV magnitudes. This indicates very young underlying stellar populations (≈10 Myr) at relatively low metallicities (≈0.2 Z⊙). The FUV non-ionizing spectra of potential LCEs is characterized by blue UV slopes (≤−2), enhanced Ly α emission (≤−25 Å), strong UV nebular lines (e.g. high C IV1550/C III1908 ≥0.75 ratios), and weak absorption lines (≤1 Å). The latter suggests the existence of low gas-column-density channels in the interstellar medium, which enables the escape of ionizing photons. By comparing our VANDELS results against other surveys in the literature, our findings imply that the ionizing budget in the EoR was likely dominated by UV-faint, low-mass, and dustless galaxies. © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.