Observed sample of z~0.7 massive galaxies

These relations of increasing age and metallicity with galaxy mass for the galaxy population as a whole have a similar shape as the z~0.1 analog derived for Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies but are shifted by -0.28 dex in age and by -0.13 dex in metallicity, at odds with simple passive evolution. Considering z=0.7 quiescent galaxies alone, we find that no additional star formation and chemical enrichment are required for them to evolve into the present-day quiescent population.

However, other observations require the quiescent population to grow from z=0.7 to the present day. This growth could be supplied by the quenching of a fraction of z=0.7 M_{sstarf}_>10^11^ M_{sun}_ star-forming galaxies with metallicities already comparable to those of quiescent galaxies, thus leading to the observed increase of the scatter in age without affecting the metallicity distribution. However, rapid quenching of the entire population of massive star-forming galaxies at z=0.7 would be inconsistent with the age- and metallicity-mass relations for the population as a whole and with the metallicity distribution of star-forming galaxies only, which are, on average, 0.12 dex less metal rich than their local counterparts.

This indicates chemical enrichment until the present in at least a fraction of the z=0.7 star-forming galaxies in our sample.