The miniJPAS survey: Identification and characterization of galaxy populations with the J-PAS photometric system
Full list of authors: González Delgado, R. M.; Díaz-García, L. A.; de Amorim, A.; Bruzual, G.; Cid Fernandes, R.; Pérez, E.; Bonoli, S.; Cenarro, A. J.; Coelho, P. R. T.; Cortesi, A.; García-Benito, R.; López Fernández, R.; Martínez-Solaeche, G.; Rodríguez-Martín, J. E.; Magris, G.; Mejía-Narvaez, A.; Brito-Silva, D.; Abramo, L. R.; Diego, J. M. ; Dupke, R. A.; Hernán-Caballero, A.; Hernández-Monteagudo, C.; López-Sanjuan, C.; Marín-Franch, A.; Marra, V.; Moles, M.; Montero-Dorta, A.; Queiroz, C.; Sodré, L.; Varela, J.; Vázquez Ramió, H.; Vílchez, J. M.; Baqui, P. O.; Benítez, N.; Cristóbal-Hornillos, D.; Ederoclite, A.; Mendes de Oliveira, C.; Civera, T.; Muniesa, D.; Taylor, K.; Tempel, E.; J-PAS Collaboration. ; The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) will soon start imaging thousands of square degrees of the northern sky with its unique set of 56 filters (spectral resolution of R - 60). Before the arrival of the final instrument, we observed 1 deg2 on the AEGIS field with an interim camera with all the J-PAS filters. Taking advantage of these data, dubbed miniJPAS, we aim at proving the scientific potential of the J-PAS to derive the stellar population properties of galaxies via fitting codes for spectral energy distributions (SEDs), with the ultimate goal of performing galaxy evolution studies across cosmic time. One parametric (BaySeAGal) and three non-parametric (MUFFIT, AlStar, and TGASPEX) SED-fitting codes are used to constrain the stellar mass, age, metallicity, extinction, and rest-frame and dust-corrected (u-r) colours of a complete flux-limited sample (rSDSS - 22.5 AB) of miniJPAS galaxies that extends up to z = 1. We generally find consistent results on the galaxy properties derived from the different codes, independently of the galaxy spectral type or redshift; this is remarkable considering that 25% of the J-spectra have signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) -3. For galaxies with S=N - 10, we estimate that the J-PAS photometric system will allow us to derive the stellar population properties of rest-frame (u - r) colour, stellar mass, extinction, and mass-weighted age with a precision of 0:04 - 0:02 mag, 0:07 - 0:03 dex, 0:2 - 0:09 mag, and 0:16 - 0:07 dex, respectively. This precision is equivalent to that obtained with spectroscopic surveys of similar S/N. By using the dust-corrected (u - r) colour mass diagram, a powerful proxy for characterizing galaxy populations, we find: (i) that the fraction of red and blue galaxies evolves with cosmic time, with red galaxies being -38% and -18% of the whole population at z = 0:1 and z = 0:5, respectively, and (ii) consistent results between codes for the average intrinsic (u-r) colour, stellar mass, age, and stellar metallicity of blue and red galaxies and their evolution up to z = 1. At all redshifts, the more massive galaxies belong to the red sequence, and these galaxies are typically older and more metal-rich than their counterparts in the blue cloud. Our results confirm that with J-PAS data we will be able to analyse large samples of galaxies up to z - 1, with galaxy stellar masses above log(M?=M-) - 8:9, 9.5, and 9.9 at z = 0:3, 0.5, and 0.7, respectively. The star formation history of a complete sub-sample of galaxies selected at z - 0:1 with log(M=M-) > 8:3 constrains the cosmic evolution of the star formation rate density up to z - 3, in good agreement with results from cosmological surveys. © ESO 2021. ; Acknowledgements. R.G.D., L.A.D.G., R.G.B., G.M.S., J.R.M., and E.P. acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and to the AYA2016-77846-P and PID2019-109067-GB100. L.A.D.G. also acknowledges financial support by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (grant MOST 106-2628-M-001-003-MY3) and by the Academia Sinica (grant AS-IA-107-M01). G.B. acknowledges financial support from the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) through grant DGAPA/PAPIIT IG100319 and from CONACyT through grant CB2015-252364. SB acknowledges PGC2018-097585-B-C22, MINECO/FEDER, UE of the Spanish Ministerio de Econo-mia, Industria y Competitividad. L.S.J. acknowledges support from Brazilian agencies FAPESP (2019/10923-5) and CNPq (304819/201794). P.O.B. acknowledges support from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. P.R.T.C. acknowledges financial support from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) process number 2018/05392-8 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvi-mento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) process number 310041/2018-0. V.M. thanks CNPq (Brazil) for partial financial support. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 888258. E.T. acknowledges support by ETAg grant PRG1006 and by EU through the ERDF CoE grant TK133. Based on observations made with the JST/T250 telescope and PathFinder camera for the miniJPAS project at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ), in Teruel, owned, managed, and operated by the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA). We acknowledge the OAJ Data Processing and Archiving Unit (UPAD) for reducing and calibrating the OAJ data used in this work. Funding for OAJ, UPAD, and CEFCA has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragón through the Fondo de Inver-siones de Teruel; the Aragón Government through the Research Groups E96, E103, and E16_17R; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) with grant PGC2018-097585-B-C21; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO/FEDER, UE) under AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2012-30789, and ICTS-2009-14; and European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685). ; Peer reviewed