A massive quiescent galaxy confirmed in a protocluster at z=3.09

Understand

We report a massive quiescent galaxy at $z_{\rm spec}=3.0922^{+0.008}_{-0.004}$ spectroscopically confirmed at a protocluster in the SSA22 field by detecting the Balmer and Ca {\footnotesize II} absorption features with multi-object spectrometer for infrared exploration (MOSFIRE) on the Keck I telescope.

• This is the most distant quiescent galaxy confirmed in a protocluster to date.
• We fit the optical to mid-infrared photometry and spectrum simultaneously with spectral energy distribution (SED) models of parametric and nonparametric star formation histories (SFH).
• Both models fit the observed SED well and confirm that this object is a massive quiescent galaxy with the stellar mass of $\log(\rm M_{\star}/M_{\odot}) = 11.26^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$ and $11.54^{+0.03}_{-0.00}$, and star formation rate of $\rm SFR/M_{\odot}~yr^{-1} <0.3$ and $=0.01^{+0.03}_{-0.01}$ for parametric and nonparametric models, respectively.