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The KMOS galaxy evolution survey (KGES): the angular momentum of star-forming galaxies over the last ≍10 Gyr

Tiley, Alfred L.; Gillman, S.; Cortese, L.; Swinbank, A.M.; Dudzevičiūtė, U.; Harrison, C.M.; Smail, I.; Obreschkow, D.; Croom, S.M.; Sharples, R.M.; Puglisi, A.

The KMOS galaxy evolution survey (KGES): the angular momentum of star-forming galaxies over the last ≍10 Gyr Thumbnail


Authors

Alfred L. Tiley

S. Gillman

L. Cortese

C.M. Harrison

D. Obreschkow

S.M. Croom



Abstract

We present the KMOS Galaxy Evolution Survey (KGES), a K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) study of the H α and [N II] emission from 288 K-band-selected galaxies at 1.2 ≲ z ≲ 1.8, with stellar masses in the range log10(M∗/M⊙)≈9 – 11.5. In this paper, we describe the survey design, present the sample, and discuss the key properties of the KGES galaxies. We combine KGES with appropriately matched samples at lower redshifts from the KMOS Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS) and the SAMI Galaxy Survey. Accounting for the effects of sample selection, data quality, and analysis techniques between surveys, we examine the kinematic characteristics and angular momentum content of star-forming galaxies at z ≈ 1.5, ≈1, and ≈0. We find that stellar mass, rather than redshift, most strongly correlates with the disc fraction amongst star-forming galaxies at z ≲ 1.5, observing only a modest increase in the prevalence of discs between z ≈ 1.5 and z ≈ 0.04 at fixed stellar mass. Furthermore, typical star-forming galaxies follow the same median relation between specific angular momentum and stellar mass, regardless of their redshift, with the normalization of the relation depending more strongly on how disc-like a galaxy’s kinematics are. This suggests that massive star-forming discs form in a very similar manner across the ≈10 Gyr encompassed by our study and that the inferred link between the angular momentum of galaxies and their haloes does not change significantly across the stellar mass and redshift ranges probed in this work.

Citation

Tiley, A. L., Gillman, S., Cortese, L., Swinbank, A., Dudzevičiūtė, U., Harrison, C., …Puglisi, A. (2021). The KMOS galaxy evolution survey (KGES): the angular momentum of star-forming galaxies over the last ≍10 Gyr. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 506(1), 323-342. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1692

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 7, 2021
Online Publication Date Jun 14, 2021
Publication Date 2021-09
Deposit Date Oct 26, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 506
Issue 1
Pages 323-342
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1692
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.05511.pdf

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2021 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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