The evolution of Balmer absorption-line strengths in E/S0 galaxies from z=0 to z=0.83

We present new results from a systematic study of absorption-line strengths of galaxies in clusters approaching redshifts of unity. In this Letter, we specifically compare the strengths of the high-order Balmer absorption features of H gamma and H delta in E/SO galaxies in the four clusters Abell 2256 (z = 0.06), Cl 1358+62 (z = 0.33), MS 2053 -04 (z = 0.58), and MS 1054-03 (z = 0.83). By comparing the correlation of the Balmer line strengths with the velocity dispersions for E/SO galaxies in the four clusters, we find moderate evolution in the zero point of the (H delta (A)+ H gamma (A))-sigma relation with redshift. The trend is consistent with the passive evolution of old stellar populations. Under the assumption that the samples can be compared directly, we use single-burst stellar population synthesis models to constrain the last major occurrences of star formation in the observed E/SO galaxies to be z(f) > 2.5 (95% confidence). We have compared the evolution of the Balmer absorption with the evolution of the B-band fundamental plane and find that simple stellar population models agree very well with the data. While the best agreement occurs with a low value for Omega (m), the data provide strong confirmation of the time evolution in recent stellar population models.