2004ApJ...609..683T

We select E+A candidates from a spectroscopic data set of ∼800 field galaxies and measure the E+A fraction at 0.3<z<1 to be 2.7%±1.1%, a value lower than that in galaxy clusters at comparable redshifts (11%±3%). HST WFPC2 imaging for five of our six E+A's shows that they have a heterogeneous parent population: these E+A's span a range in half-light radius (0.8h^–1kpc<r_1/2<8h^–1kpc) and estimated internal velocity dispersion (50km/s≲σ_est≲220km/s), and they include luminous systems (-21.6≤M_Bz-5logh≤-19.2). Despite their diversity in some aspects, the E+A's share several common characteristics that indicate that the E+A phase is an important link in the evolution of star-forming galaxies into passive systems: the E+A's are uniformly redder than the blue, star-forming galaxies that make up the majority of the field, they are more likely to be bulge-dominated than the average field galaxy, and they tend to be morphologically irregular. We find that E+A's make up ∼9% of the absorption-line systems in this redshift range and estimate that ≳25% of passive galaxies in the local field had an E+A phase at z≲1.