HII Galaxies as deep cosmological probes

Abstract

We re-investigated the use of the Hubble diagram to measure the cosmological constant ($Λ$) and the mass density of the Universe ($Ω_M$). We find an important focusing effect in $Λ$ for redshifts about 3. This effect implies that the apparent magnitude of a standard candle at redshifts z=2-3 has almost no dependence on $Λ$ for $Ω_M>0.2$. This means that $Ω_M$ can be measured independently of $Ω_Λ$ by targeting the redshift range according to an estimate of the value of $Ω_M$. We explore the evidence in support of the suggestion that extreme starburst galaxies also known as HII galaxies can be used as distance estimators over a wide range of redshifts and reaching very high values. We have compiled literature data of HII galaxies up to $z\sim 3$ and found a good correlation between their luminosity and velocity dispersion measured from their strong emission lines, thus confirming the correlation already known to exist for HII galaxies in the nearby Universe. Several systematic effects such as age, extinction, kinematics, and metallicity are discussed as well as the effects of different cosmologies.