The Assembly History of Disk Galaxies: II. Probing the Emerging Tully-Fisher Relation During 1<z<1.7

TL;DR

This study measures the evolution of the stellar mass Tully-Fisher relation for star-forming disk galaxies between redshifts 1 and 1.7, revealing a tight relation with minimal zero-point shift over this period.

Contribution

It provides new resolved spectroscopic measurements of galaxies at 1<z<1.7 and constructs the stellar mass Tully-Fisher relation during this epoch, bridging previous studies at z~1 and higher redshifts.

Findings

The Tully-Fisher relation is well-defined at 1<z<1.7.

Zero-point shift since z~1.7 is only 0.02 dex.

Scatter in the relation increases by up to 60%.

Abstract

Through extended integrations using the recently-installed deep depletion CCD on the red arm of the Keck I Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph, we present new measurements of the resolved spectra of 70 morphologically-selected star-forming galaxies with i_AB<24.1 in the redshift range 1<z<1.7. Using the formalism introduced in Paper I of this series and available HST ACS images, we successfully recover rotation curves using the extended emission line distribution of [O II] 3727 A to 2.2 times the disk scale radius for a sample of 42 galaxies. Combining these measures with stellar masses derived from HST and ground-based near-infrared photometry enables us to construct the stellar mass Tully-Fisher relation in the time interval between the well-constructed relation defined at z~1 in Paper I and the growing body of resolved dynamics probed with integral field unit spectrographs at z>2. Remarkably, we find a well-defined Tully-Fisher relation with up to 60% increase in scatter and stellar mass zero-point shift constraint of 0.02+/-0.02 dex since z~1.7, compared to the local relation. Although our sample is incomplete in terms of either a fixed stellar mass or star formation rate limit, we discuss the implications that typical star-forming disk galaxies evolve to arrive on a well-defined Tully-Fisher relation within a surprisingly short period of cosmic history.