Morphologies of a new class of rest-frame optical selected high redshift galaxies

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Hst Proposal Id #10196 Cosmology

Scientific paper

We have obtained deep very Js, H, Ks imaging with the VLT of two fields with excellent optical imaging, in order to study high redshift galaxies. Using these Near-IR images, we identified a class of galaxies with Js - Ks color larger than 2.3. Photometric redshifts and spectroscopic follow-up showed that their mean redshift is 2.5 +- 0.7. These galaxies are complementary to Lyman break selected galaxies: the overlap is minimal, and the rest-frame optical colors of the Js-Ks selected galaxies are much redder. Their contribution to the stellar mass density is comparable to that of Lyman breaks in our fields. SED fits and Near-IR spectroscopy of the Js-Ks selected galaxies indicate median ages between 1 and 2 Gyr, a factor of 3-5 older than the ages of Lyman break galaxies estimated by similar methods. They are likely the oldest galaxies at z=2.5, and may be evolving into the most massive galaxies at z=0. We propose to obtain images of the spectroscopically confirmed Js-Ks galaxies with the NICMOS/NIC3 camera in the H band. These galaxies lie the field of MS1054-03, for which we have excellent groundbased and HST optical imaging. The increased depth and spatial resolution of the NICMOS imaging will allow us to determine the restframe optical morphologies of the Js - Ks galaxies, in order to study their intensity profiles and regularity, to decompose the largest galaxies in bulges and disks, to measure scale lengths, and to look for evidence of merging and recent star formation. This study would provide us unique insight into the nature of these red galaxies, their evolutionary history and their likely descendants at low redshift.

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