Description
Using spectroscopic data from the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe Groth Strip Survey (DGSS), we analyze the gas-phase oxygen abundances in the warm ionized medium for 64 emission-line field galaxies in the redshift range 0.26<z<0.82. These galaxies comprise a small subset selected from among 693 objects in the DGSS. They are chosen for chemical analysis by virtue of having the strongest emission lines. Oxygen abundances relative to hydrogen are in the range 8.4<12+log(O/H)<9.0 with typical internal plus systematic measurement uncertainties of 0.17dex. The 64 DGSS galaxies collectively exhibit an increase in metallicity with B-band luminosity, i.e., an L-Z relation like that seen among local galaxies. Using the DGSS sample and local galaxy samples for comparison, we searched for a "second parameter" that might explain some of the dispersion seen in the L-Z relation. Parameters such as galaxy color, emission-line equivalent width, and effective radius were explored but found to be uncorrelated with residuals from the mean L-Z relation.
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