The spectral energy distribution of galaxies at z > 2.5: Implications from the Herschel/SPIRE color-color diagram

TL;DR

This study analyzes high-redshift galaxy spectral energy distributions using Herschel SPIRE color-color diagrams, revealing that local galaxy templates are inadequate and proposing color cuts for redshift estimation, though with significant dispersion.

Contribution

It introduces a method to classify high-z galaxies by redshift using SPIRE color-color diagrams and evaluates its effectiveness with a large galaxy sample.

Findings

Local SED templates do not match high-z galaxy colors.

High-z templates with evolution from z=0 to 3 fit observed colors.

Color cuts can separate populations by mean redshift but with large dispersion.

Abstract

We use the Herschel SPIRE color-color diagram to study the spectral energy distribution (SED) and the redshift estimation of high-z galaxies. We compiled a sample of 57 galaxies with spectroscopically confirmed redshifts and SPIRE detections in all three bands at $z=2.5-6.4$, and compared their average SPIRE colors with SED templates from local and high-z libraries. We find that local SEDs are inconsistent with high-z observations. The local calibrations of the parameters need to be adjusted to describe the average colors of high-z galaxies. For high-z libraries, the templates with an evolution from z=0 to 3 can well describe the average colors of the observations at high redshift. Using these templates, we defined color cuts to divide the SPIRE color-color diagram into different regions with different mean redshifts. We tested this method and two other color cut methods using a large sample of 783 Herschel-selected galaxies, and find that although these methods can separate the sample into populations with different mean redshifts, the dispersion of redshifts in each population is considerably large. Additional information is needed for better sampling.