Transient star B/R ratio and star formation in $z\gtrsim 1$ lensed galaxies

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the blue/red transient star ratio in lensed galaxies at z>1 can reveal recent star formation history, providing a new observational constraint complementary to spectral energy distribution analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a forward modeling approach to connect transient detection rates with star formation history, highlighting the B/R ratio's sensitivity to age and its potential as a new diagnostic tool.

Findings

The B/R ratio decreases rapidly with galaxy age.

B/R ratio is moderately sensitive to metallicity.

Combined B/R ratio and SED fitting constrains recent star formation variability.

Abstract

The extreme magnification from galaxy clusters and microlenses therein allows the detection of individual, luminous stars in lensed galaxies as transient events, and hence provides a valuable window into the high mass stellar population in $z>1$ galaxies. As these bright stars can only be formed at specific ages, the relative abundance of transient events at blue (B) and red (R) optical wavelengths ($B/R$ ratio) can provide insights into the recent star formation history of galaxies that are not well constrained by their spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Here, we forward model the transient detection rates in an idealized mock scenario to find that the $B/R$ ratio of strongly lensed $z>1$ galaxies decreases quickly with increasing age. This ratio has moderate sensitivity to metallicity and comparatively low sensitivity to dust attenuation, with no significant dependency on the stellar initial mass function. Fitting model stellar populations to either the SED or $B/R$ ratio alone of ``Warhol'' arc ($z = 0.94$), we find that neither a simple single starburst nor a more complex star formation can simultaneously reproduce both constraints. We then demonstrate that a best-fit model constrained by both the B/R ratio and SED requires a star-formation rate that has varied quite dramatically over the past $\sim$50 Myr, for which the total stellar mass formed over this time is a factor of 10 (with $2-3\sigma$ significance) different from the best-fit models to the SED alone. Our work shows that the transient $B/R$ ratio can be used as an additional powerful constraint on the recent star formation history of higher-redshift galaxies in future works that are strongly lensed by galaxy clusters.