HerMES: A STATISTICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION OF HERSCHEL-SPIRE SOURCES USING THE CROSS-CORRELATION TECHNIQUE
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 (United States)
- Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS), bat121, F-91405 Orsay (France)
- Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universita di Padova, vicolo Osservatorio, 3, 35122 Padova (Italy)
- Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy 389-UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Queens Buildings, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
- Astronomy Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH (United Kingdom)
- Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey RH5 6NT (United Kingdom)
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
- Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, CNRS, UPMC University of Paris 06, 98bis Boulevard Arago, F-75014 Paris (France)
The wide-area imaging surveys with the Herschel Space Observatory at submillimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths have now resulted in catalogs of the order of one-hundred-thousand dusty, starburst galaxies. These galaxies capture an important phase of galaxy formation and evolution, but, unfortunately, the redshift distribution of these galaxies, N(z), is still mostly uncertain due to limitations associated with counterpart identification at optical wavelengths and spectroscopic follow-up. We make a statistical estimate of N(z) using a clustering analysis of sub-mm galaxies detected at each of 250, 350 and 500 {mu}m from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey centered on the Booetes field. We cross-correlate Herschel galaxies against galaxy samples at optical and near-IR wavelengths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey, and the Spitzer Deep Wide Field Survey. We create optical and near-IR galaxy samples based on their photometric or spectroscopic redshift distributions and test the accuracy of those redshift distributions with similar galaxy samples defined with catalogs from the Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS), which has superior spectroscopic coverage. We model the clustering auto- and cross-correlations of Herschel and optical/IR galaxy samples to estimate N(z) and clustering bias factors. The S{sub 350} > 20 mJy galaxies have a bias factor varying with redshift as b(z) = 1.0{sup +1.0}{sub -0.5}(1 + z){sup 1.2{sup +{sup 0{sup .{sup 3{sub -}{sub -}{sub 0}{sub .}{sub 7}}}}}}. This bias and the redshift dependence is broadly in agreement with galaxies that occupy dark matter halos of mass in the range of 10{sup 12} to 10{sup 13} M{sub Sun }. We find that galaxy selections in all three Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) bands share a similar average redshift, with (z) = 1.8 {+-} 0.2 for 250 {mu}m selected samples, and (z) = 1.9 {+-} 0.2 for both 350 and 500 {mu}m samples, while their distributions behave differently. For 250 {mu}m selected galaxies we find the a larger number of sources with z {<=} 1 when compared with the subsequent two SPIRE bands, with 350 and 500 {mu}m selected SPIRE samples having peaks in N(z) at progressively higher redshifts. We compare our clustering-based N(z) results to sub-mm galaxy model predictions in the literature, and with an estimate of N(z) using a stacking analysis of COSMOS 24 {mu}m detections.
- OSTI ID:
- 22036958
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 753, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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