We present an overview and the first data release of ZFIRE, a spectroscopic redshift survey of star-forming galaxies that utilizes the MOSFIRE instrument on Keck-I to study galaxy properties in rich environments at 1.5<z<2.5. ZFIRE measures accurate spectroscopic redshifts and basic galaxy properties derived from multiple emission lines. The galaxies are selected from a stellar mass limited sample based on deep near infrared imaging (K_AB_<25) and precise photometric redshifts from the ZFOURGE and UKIDSS surveys as well as grism redshifts from 3DHST. Between 2013 and 2015, ZFIRE has observed the COSMOS and UDS legacy fields over 13 nights and has obtained 211 galaxy redshifts over 1.57<z<2.66 from a combination of nebular emission lines (such as H{alpha}, [NII], H{beta}, [OII], [OIII], and [SII]) observed at 1-2{mu}m. Based on our medium-band near infrared photometry, we are able to spectrophotometrically flux calibrate our spectra to ~10% accuracy. ZFIRE reaches 5{sigma} emission line flux limits of ~3x10^-18^erg/s/cm^2^ with a resolving power of R=3500 and reaches masses down to ~10^9^M_{sun}_. We confirm that the primary input survey, ZFOURGE, has produced photometric redshifts for star-forming galaxies (including highly attenuated ones) accurate to {Delta}z/(1+z_spec_)=0.015 with 0.7% outliers. We measure a slight redshift bias of <0.001, and we note that the redshift bias tends to be larger at higher masses. We also examine the role of redshift on the derivation of rest-frame colors and stellar population parameters from SED fitting techniques. The ZFIRE survey extends spectroscopically confirmed z~2 samples across a richer range of environments, here we make available the first public release of the data for use by the community.
We investigate active galactic nuclei (AGN) candidates within the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE) to determine the impact they have on star formation in their host galaxies. We first identify a population of radio, X-ray, and infrared-selected AGN by cross-matching the deep Ks-band imaging of ZFOURGE with overlapping multiwavelength data. From this, we construct a mass-complete (log(M*/M_{sun}_)>=9.75), AGN luminosity limited sample of 235 AGN hosts over z=0.2-3.2. We compare the rest-frame U-V versus V-J (UVJ) colours and specific star formation rates (sSFRs) of the AGN hosts to a mass-matched control sample of inactive (non-AGN) galaxies. UVJ diagnostics reveal AGN tend to be hosted in a lower fraction of quiescent galaxies and a higher fraction of dusty galaxies than the control sample. Using 160{mu}m Herschel PACS data, we find the mean specific star formation rate of AGN hosts to be elevated by 0.34-/-0.07dex with respect to the control sample across all redshifts. This offset is primarily driven by infrared-selected AGN, where the mean sSFR is found to be elevated by as much as a factor of ~5. The remaining population, comprised predominantly of X-ray AGN hosts, is found mostly consistent with inactive galaxies, exhibiting only a marginal elevation. We discuss scenarios that may explain these findings and postulate that AGN are less likely to be a dominant mechanism for moderating galaxy growth via quenching than has previously been suggested.
We study the relationship between stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), ionization state, and gas-phase metallicity for a sample of 41 normal star-forming galaxies at 3<~z<~3.7. The gas-phase oxygen abundance, ionization parameter, and electron density of ionized gas are derived from rest-frame optical strong emission lines measured on near-infrared spectra obtained with Keck/Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infra-Red Exploration. We remove the effect of these strong emission lines in the broadband fluxes to compute stellar masses via spectral energy distribution fitting, while the SFR is derived from the dust-corrected ultraviolet luminosity. The ionization parameter is weakly correlated with the specific SFR, but otherwise the ionization parameter and electron density do not correlate with other global galaxy properties such as stellar mass, SFR, and metallicity. The mass-metallicity relation (MZR) at z~3.3 shows lower metallicity by ~0.7dex than that at z=0 at the same stellar mass. Our sample shows an offset by ~0.3dex from the locally defined mass-metallicity-SFR relation, indicating that simply extrapolating such a relation to higher redshift may predict an incorrect evolution of MZR. Furthermore, within the uncertainties we find no SFR-metallicity correlation, suggesting a less important role of SFR in controlling the metallicity at high redshift. We finally investigate the redshift evolution of the MZR by using the model by Lilly et al. (2013ApJ...772..119L), finding that the observed evolution from z=0 to z~3.3 can be accounted for by the model assuming a weak redshift evolution of the star formation efficiency.
