LBT/LUCIFER view of star-forming galaxies in the cluster 7C 1756+6520 at z similar to 1.4

Galaxy clusters are key places to study the contribution of nature (i.e. mass and morphology) and nurture (i.e. environment) in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Recently, a number of clusters at z > 1, i.e. corresponding to the first epochs of the cluster formation, have been discovered a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2012-10, Vol.426 (2), p.1195-1203
Main Authors: Magrini, Laura, Sommariva, Veronica, Cresci, Giovanni, Sani, Eleonora, Galametz, Audrey, Mannucci, Filippo, Petropoulou, Vasiliki, Fumana, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clusters
Evolution
Galaxies
Metallicity
Nuclei
Spectrographs
Spectroscopy
Star formation
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Summary:Galaxy clusters are key places to study the contribution of nature (i.e. mass and morphology) and nurture (i.e. environment) in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Recently, a number of clusters at z > 1, i.e. corresponding to the first epochs of the cluster formation, have been discovered and confirmed spectroscopically. We present new observations obtained with the LBT Near Infrared Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research (LUCIFER) spectrograph at Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) of a sample of star-forming galaxies associated with a large-scale structure around the radio galaxy 7C 1756+6520 at z = 1.42. Combining our spectroscopic data and the literature photometric data, we derived some of the properties of these galaxies: star formation rate, metallicity and stellar mass. With the aim of analysing the effect of the cluster environment on galaxy evolution, we have located the galaxies in the plane of the so-called fundamental metallicity relation (FMR), which is known not to evolve with redshift up to z = 2.5 for field galaxies, but it is still unexplored in rich environments at low and high redshifts. We found that the properties of the galaxies in the cluster 7C 1756+6520 are compatible with the FMR which suggests that the effect of the environment on galaxy metallicity at this early epoch of cluster formation is marginal. As a side study, we also report the spectroscopic analysis of a bright active galactic nucleus, belonging to the cluster, which shows a significant outflow of gas.
ISSN:0035-8711
1365-2966
DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21460.x