(Proposal ID) S12A-062

(PI) Stott, John

(Proposal Title)
The mass-metallicity relation and sSFR correlations for galaxies at z>1

(Abstract)
The peak in the volume averaged star formation rate for galaxies occurs in the 
redshift range z=1-3. At this epoch, the star formation rate in typical 
galaxies is an order of magnitude higher than in the local Universe. The task 
is now to address `how' and `why' the Universe was so different then. It is 
therefore important to perform spectroscopy of these galaxies to gain an 
understanding of their mass-metallicity and SFR-mass relations and AGN 
content, in order to understand their star-formation histories and identify 
the fuelling methods that are responsible for this enhanced activity. Current 
results in this field are contradictory and confusing so we propose to use the 
unique NIR multiplex spectroscopic capabilities of FMOS to observe ~2000 
narrow-band selected H alpha emitters in the range 0.84<z<2.23 from the 
volume-selected HiZELS survey. In this way we can measure the star formation 
rate, gas metallicity and AGN contribution combined with photometric estimates 
of stellar mass and thus split into statistically significant sub-samples to 
isolate the processes driving the most important epoch of star formation.