Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Teruel (Spain)
Lancaster University (United Kingdom)
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada (Spain)
Observatório Nacional – MCTI (ON), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Donostia International Physics Centre (DIPC), Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain); IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao (Spain)
Observatório Nacional – MCTI (ON), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States); University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States)
Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil)
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife (Spain); Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
Over the past decades, several studies have discovered a population of galaxies that undergo very strong star formation events. They are called extreme emission line galaxies (EELGs). We exploit the capabilities of the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS), a wide-field multifilter survey, with which 2000 square degrees of the northern sky are already observed. We use it to identify EELGs at low redshift by their [OIII]5007 emission line. We intend to provide a more complete, deep, and less biased sample of local EELGs. We selected objects with an excess of flux in the J-PLUS medium-band J0515 filter, which covers the [OIII] line at z < 0.06. We removed contaminants (stars and higher-redshift systems) using J-PLUS and WISE infrared photometry, with SDSS spectra as a benchmark. We performed spectral energy distribution fitting to estimate the physical properties of the galaxies: line fluxes, equivalent widths (EWs), masses, stellar population ages, and so on. We identify 466 EELGs at z < 0.06 with [OIII] EW over 300 Å and an r-band magnitude below 20, of which 411 were previously unknown. Most show compact morphologies, low stellar masses (log(M•/M⊙) ~ 8.13–0.58+0.61), low dust extinction (E(B–V) ~ 0.1–0.1+0.2), and very young bursts of star formation (3.0–2.0+2.7 Myr). Our method is up to ~20 times more efficient in detecting EELGs per Mpc3 than broadband surveys, and it is as complete as magnitude-limited spectroscopic surveys (but reaches fainter objects). The sample is not directly biased against strong Hα emitters, in contrast with works using broadband surveys. We demonstrate that J-PLUS can identify a large sample of previously unknown EELGs showing unique properties following a clear selection process. A fraction of the EELGs are probably similar to the first galaxies in the Universe, but they are at a much lower redshift, which makes them ideal targets for follow-up studies.
Lumbreras-Calle, A., et al. "J-PLUS: Uncovering a large population of extreme [OIII] emitters in the local Universe." Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 668, Dec. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142898
Lumbreras-Calle, A., López-Sanjuan, C., Sobral, D., Fernández-Ontiveros, J. A., Vílchez, J. M., Hernán-Caballero, A., Akhlaghi, M., Díaz-García, L. A., Alcaniz, J., Angulo, R. E., Cenarro, A. J., Cristóbal-Hornillos, D., Dupke, R. A., Ederoclite, A., Hernández-Monteagudo, C., Marín-Franch, A., Moles, M., Sodré, Jr., L., Vázquez Ramió, H., & Varela, J. (2022). J-PLUS: Uncovering a large population of extreme [OIII] emitters in the local Universe. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 668. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142898
Lumbreras-Calle, A., López-Sanjuan, C., Sobral, D., et al., "J-PLUS: Uncovering a large population of extreme [OIII] emitters in the local Universe," Astronomy and Astrophysics 668 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142898
@article{osti_2425205,
author = {Lumbreras-Calle, A. and López-Sanjuan, C. and Sobral, D. and Fernández-Ontiveros, J. A. and Vílchez, J. M. and Hernán-Caballero, A. and Akhlaghi, M. and Díaz-García, L. A. and Alcaniz, J. and Angulo, R. E. and others},
title = {J-PLUS: Uncovering a large population of extreme [OIII] emitters in the local Universe},
annote = {Over the past decades, several studies have discovered a population of galaxies that undergo very strong star formation events. They are called extreme emission line galaxies (EELGs). We exploit the capabilities of the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS), a wide-field multifilter survey, with which 2000 square degrees of the northern sky are already observed. We use it to identify EELGs at low redshift by their [OIII]5007 emission line. We intend to provide a more complete, deep, and less biased sample of local EELGs. We selected objects with an excess of flux in the J-PLUS medium-band J0515 filter, which covers the [OIII] line at z •/M⊙) ~ 8.13–0.58+0.61), low dust extinction (E(B–V) ~ 0.1–0.1+0.2), and very young bursts of star formation (3.0–2.0+2.7 Myr). Our method is up to ~20 times more efficient in detecting EELGs per Mpc3 than broadband surveys, and it is as complete as magnitude-limited spectroscopic surveys (but reaches fainter objects). The sample is not directly biased against strong Hα emitters, in contrast with works using broadband surveys. We demonstrate that J-PLUS can identify a large sample of previously unknown EELGs showing unique properties following a clear selection process. A fraction of the EELGs are probably similar to the first galaxies in the Universe, but they are at a much lower redshift, which makes them ideal targets for follow-up studies.},
doi = {10.1051/0004-6361/202142898},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/2425205},
journal = {Astronomy and Astrophysics},
issn = {ISSN 0004-6361},
volume = {668},
place = {United States},
publisher = {EDP Sciences},
year = {2022},
month = {12}}