(Proposal ID) S14A-084

(PI) Stott, John

(Proposal Title)
 The Fundamental Metallicity Relation of z~1-2 galaxies

(Abstract)
The peak in the volume averaged star formation rate for galaxies occurs in the 
redshift range z = 1 - 2. 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 responsible for this enhanced activity. Current results 
in this field are contradictory and confused so we propose to use the unique 
NIR multiplex spectroscopic capabilities of FMOS to observe > 1000 narrow-band 
selected Halpha emitters in the range 0.84 < z < 1.47 from the HiZELS survey. 
In this way we can measure the star formation rate and gas metallicity 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. Note: our 12A semester results are now published 
(Stott et al. 2013), but our conclusions are limited by the sample size (100 
galaxies) and parameter space probed (need lower SFR limit).