Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 792, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/792/2/95
Keywords
galaxies: abundances; galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: stellar content
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
- NASA [NNX13AI46G]
- NSF [AST-1313280]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Packard Foundation
- Australian Research Council [FT100100280]
- Monash Research Accelerator Program (MRA)
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Japanese Monbukagakusho
- Max Planck Society
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- American Museum of Natural History
- Astrophysical Institute Potsdam
- University of Basel
- University of Cambridge
- Case Western Reserve University
- University of Chicago
- Drexel University
- Fermilab
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Korean Scientist Group
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA)
- New Mexico State University
- Ohio State University
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- United States Naval Observatory
- University of Washington
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [1524161] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NASA [473547, NNX13AI46G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
- Australian Research Council [FT100100280] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
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We present results from modeling the optical spectra of a large sample of quiescent galaxies between 0.1 < z < 0.7 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES). We examine how the stellar ages and abundance patterns of galaxies evolve over time as a function of stellar mass from 10(9.6)-10(11.8) M-circle dot. Galaxy spectra are stacked in bins of mass and redshift and modeled over a wavelength range from 4000 angstrom to 5500 angstrom. Full spectrum stellar population synthesis modeling provides estimates of the age and the abundances of the elements Fe, Mg, C, N, and Ca. We find negligible evolution in elemental abundances at fixed stellar mass over roughly 7 Gyr of cosmic time. In addition, the increase in stellar ages with time for massive galaxies is consistent with passive evolution since z = 0.7. Taken together, these results favor a scenario in which the inner similar to 0.3-3 R-e of massive quiescent galaxies have been passively evolving over the last half of cosmic time. Interestingly, the derived stellar ages are considerably younger than the age of the universe at all epochs, consistent with an equivalent single-burst star formation epoch of z less than or similar to 1.5. These young stellar population ages coupled with the existence of massive quiescent galaxies at z > 1 indicate the inhomogeneous nature of the z less than or similar to 0.7 quiescent population. The data also permit the addition of newly quenched galaxies at masses below similar to 10(10.5) M-circle dot at z < 0.7. Additionally, we analyze very deep Keck DEIMOS spectra of the two brightest quiescent galaxies in a cluster at z = 0.83. There is tentative evidence that these galaxies are older than their counterparts in low-density environments. In the Appendix, we demonstrate that our full spectrum modeling technique allows for accurate and reliable modeling of galaxy spectra to low S/N (similar to 20 angstrom(-1)) and/or low spectral resolution (R similar to 500).
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