A Large Massive Quiescent Galaxy Sample at z~1.2

TL;DR

This study introduces a simple color-magnitude selection method to efficiently compile a large sample of nearly 34,000 massive quiescent galaxies at redshift 1<z<1.5, enabling advanced large-scale structure analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, straightforward technique using Y-band and i-Y color to select high-redshift quiescent galaxies, significantly increasing sample size over previous surveys.

Findings

Sample of 33,893 massive quiescent galaxies at 1<z<1.5.

Majority are early-type galaxies based on morphology.

Sample size exceeds previous surveys by 7-20 times.

Abstract

In this paper we present a simple color-magnitude selection and obtain a large sample of 33,893 massive quiescent galaxies at intermediate redshifts (1<z<1.5). We choose the longest wavelength available in the Hyper-Supreme-Cam (HSC) deep survey, the Y band and i-Y color, to select the 4000A Balmer jump in passive galaxies to the highest redshift possible within the survey. With the rich multi-wavelength data in the HSC deep fields, we then confirm that the selected galaxies are in the targeted redshift range of 1<z<1.5, lie in the passive region of the UVJ diagram, and have high stellar masses at log(M*/M_sun)>10.5, with a median of log(M*/M_sun)=11.0. A small fraction of our galaxies is also covered by the HST CANDELS. Morphological analysis in the observed H band shows that the majority of this subsample are early-type galaxies. As massive early-type galaxies trace the high density regions in the large scale structure in the universe, our study provides a quick and simple way to obtain a statistical significant sample of massive galaxies in a relative narrow redshift range. Our sample is 7-20 times larger at the massive end (log(M*/M_sun)>10.5) than any existing samples obtained in previous surveys. This is a pioneer study, and the technique introduced here can be applied to future wide-field survey to study large scale structure, and to identify high density region and clusters.