Strong [O iii] λ5007 Emission-line Compact Galaxies in LAMOST DR9: Blueberries, Green Peas, and Purple Grapes

Abstract

Abstract Green Pea and Blueberry galaxies are well known for their compact size, low mass, strong emission lines, and analogs to high-z Lyα-emitting galaxies. In this study, 1547 strong [O iii] λ5007 emission-line compact galaxies with 1694 spectra are selected from LAMOST DR9 at the redshift range from 0.0 to 0.59. According to the redshift distribution, these samples can be separated into three groups: Blueberries, Green Peas, and Purple Grapes. Optical [Mg ii] λ2800 line feature, BPT diagram, multiwavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting, mid-IR (MIR) color, and MIR variability are deployed to identify 23 active galactic nucleus candidates from these samples, which are excluded for the following star formation rate (SFR) discussions. We perform the multiwavelength SED fitting with GALEX UV and WISE MIR data. Color excess from the Balmer decrement shows that these strong [O iii] λ5007 emission-line compact galaxies are not highly reddened. The stellar mass of the galaxies is obtained by fitting LAMOST calibrated spectra with the emission lines masked. We find that the SFR is increasing with the increase of redshift, while for the sources within the same redshift bin the SFR increases with mass with a similar slope to the star-forming main sequence. These samples have a median metallicity of 12 + log(O/H) of 8.10. The metallicity increases with mass, and all the sources are below the mass–metallicity relation. The direct-derived T e -based metallicity from the [O iii] λ4363 line agrees with the empirical N2-based empirical gas-phase metallicity. Moreover, these compact strong [O iii] λ5007 lines are mostly in a less dense environment.