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Massive Star Formation in a Gravitationally Lensed H II Galaxy at z = 3.357* ** ***

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© 2003. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
, , Citation R. A. E. Fosbury et al 2003 ApJ 596 797 DOI 10.1086/378228

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1 ST-ECF, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany

2 University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK

3 European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany

4 Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550

5 Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218

6 Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, CA 95616

7 SIRTF Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

8 The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101

9 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

10 Also the Space Telescopes Division, Research and Space Science Department, European Space Agency

11 Seconded from ST-ECF, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany

Dates

  1. Received 2003 March 21
  2. Accepted 2003 July 4
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0004-637X/596/2/797

Abstract

The Lynx arc, with a redshift of 3.357, was discovered during spectroscopic follow-up of the z = 0.570 cluster RX J0848+4456 from the ROSAT Deep Cluster Survey. The arc is characterized by a very red R-K color and strong, narrow emission lines. Analysis of HST WFPC2 imaging and Keck optical and infrared spectroscopy shows that the arc is an H II galaxy magnified by a factor of ~10 by a complex cluster environment. The high intrinsic luminosity, the emission-line spectrum, the absorption components seen in Lyα and C IV, and the rest-frame ultraviolet continuum are all consistent with a simple H II region model containing ~106 hot O stars. The best-fit parameters for this model imply a very hot ionizing continuum (TBB ≃ 80,000 K), a high ionization parameter (log U ≃ -1), and a low nebular metallicity (Z/Z☉ ≃ 0.05). The narrowness of the emission lines requires a low mass-to-light ratio for the ionizing stars, suggestive of an extremely low metallicity stellar cluster. The apparent overabundance of silicon in the nebula could indicate enrichment by past pair-instability supernovae, requiring stars more massive than ~140 M☉.

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Footnotes

  • * 

    Based partly on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

  • ** 

    Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

  • *** 

    Based partly on observations obtained by the staff of the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the AURA, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the NSF (United States), the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (United Kingdom), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), CNPq (Brazil), and CONICET (Argentina).

10.1086/378228