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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(732), p. 59, 2011

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/732/1/59

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The PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF a LENSED STAR-FORMING GALAXY ATz= 1.7

Journal article published in 2011 by J. R. Rigby ORCID, E. Wuyts, M. D. Gladders, K. Sharon, G. D. Becker
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We report rest-frame optical Keck/NIRSPEC spectroscopy of the bright lensed galaxy RCSGA 032727-132609 at z=1.7037. From precise measurements of the nebular lines, we infer a number of physical properties: redshift, extinction, star formation rate, ionization parameter, electron density, electron temperature, oxygen abundance, and N/O, Ne/O, and Ar/O abundance ratios. The limit on [O III]~4363 A tightly constrains the oxygen abundance via the "direct" or electron temperature method, for the first time in an average-metallicity galaxy at z~2. We compare this result to several standard "bright-line" O abundance diagnostics, thereby testing these empirically-calibrated diagnostics in situ. Finally, we explore the positions of lensed and unlensed galaxies in standard diagnostic diagrams, and explore the diversity of ionization conditions and mass--metallicity ratios at z=2. ; Comment: ApJ in press. 15 pages, 7 figures