J-PAS: A value-added catalogue of optical line intensities for nebular emission galaxies (JOLINES)

TL;DR

The paper introduces the JOLINES catalogue, providing accurate optical emission-line fluxes for nebular emission galaxies using SED fitting, validated against spectroscopic data, to support galaxy evolution studies.

Contribution

It presents a new catalogue of emission-line fluxes derived from narrow-band photometry with a robust SED fitting method, improving accuracy over traditional techniques.

Findings

Strong correlation between photometric and spectroscopic fluxes for bright lines

Reliable flux measurements for emission lines with EW ≥ 20 Å

Catalogue includes ~13,900 sources for Hα+[NII] and 7,200 for [OIII]λ5007

Abstract

We present the value-added catalogue JOLINES (J-PAS optical line intensities for nebular emission galaxies), which provides emission-line fluxes in galaxies at from the spectrophotometric catalogues of miniJPAS, J-NEP and the J-PAS early data release (EDR). This catalogue will be updated with future data releases, offering a growing resource for the study of emission-line galaxies. To obtain reliable emission-line fluxes from narrow-band photometry, we employed spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting using CIGALE, a robust tool that reconstructs the continuum emission and ensures accurate flux measurements. This method effectively mitigates uncertainties associated with direct continuum subtraction techniques, and systematics such as absorption components in the emission lines. We validate our approach using simulated observations of galaxy spectra with added noise, testing the method's performance across different equivalent width (EW) regimes and emission-line strengths. Additionally, we compare the recovered emission-line fluxes with spectroscopic measurements from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Our results show a tight correlation between photometric and spectroscopic fluxes, particularly for bright emission lines, with a typical dispersion of $\sim$0.3 dex. Reliable fluxes are obtained for emission lines with EW $\gtrsim20\, \rm{\mathring{A}}$, in agreement with previous empirical studies. The current catalogue comprises approximately 13,900 sources with reliable flux measurements in the H$\alpha$+[NII] complex and 7,200 in [OIII]$\lambda 5007$, ensuring statistically robust samples for the brightest optical emission lines. This resource will be expanded in future J-PAS releases, facilitating large-scale studies of star formation, AGN activity, and galaxy evolution.