Deep spectroscopy of bright red massive quiescent galaxies at z~2.5-3 in COSMOS

VLT/XSHOOTER | 56.0hrs| PI - F. Valentino

We propose to observe with X-Shooter a statistical sample of 7 bright (K<21 mag), massive (M*>1e11 Msun), and quiescent (sSFR<1e-9.5/yr) galaxies at z~2.5-3 selected from the brand-new COSMOS2020 catalog. The sample encloses all the galaxies in the 2sq.deg. field fulfilling these criteria and spans a range of SED shapes consistent with different formation and quenching epochs. From the spectra, we will measure accurate redshifts, ages, stellar velocity dispersions (σ_vel), and estimate possible residual unobscured SFR and/or AGN contamination from emission lines, if present. This will allow us to reconstruct the SFH from the combined spectra+SED modeling and to directly compare them with custom mock observations extracted from simulations for a systematic analysis of the history of formation of these systems. Estimates of σ_vel will also allow for a first test for the existence dynamical scaling relations at such high redshifts.