The Assembly History of Disk Galaxies. II. Probing the Emerging Tully-Fisher Relation during 1 < z < 1.7

Abstract

Through extended integrations using the recently installed deep depletion CCD on the red arm of the Keck I Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph, we present new measurements of the resolved spectra of 70 morphologically selected star-forming galaxies with i_(AB) < 24.1 in the redshift range 1≾z < 1.7. Using the formalism introduced in Paper I of this series and available Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys images, we successfully recover rotation curves using the extended emission line distribution of [O II] 3727 Å to 2.2 times the disk scale radius for a sample of 42 galaxies. Combining these measures with stellar masses derived from HST and ground-based near-infrared photometry enables us to construct the stellar mass Tully-Fisher relation (M_*-TFR) in the time interval between the well-constructed relation defined at z ≃ 1 in Paper I and the growing body of resolved dynamics probed with integral field unit spectrographs at z > 2. Remarkably, we find a well-defined TFR with up to 60% increase in scatter and zero-point shift constraint of ΔM_* = 0.02 ± 0.02 dex since z ~ 1.7, compared to the local relation. Although our sample is incomplete in terms of either a fixed stellar mass or star formation rate limit, we discuss the implications that typical star-forming disk galaxies evolve to arrive on a well-defined TFR within a surprisingly short period of cosmic history.