ON THE NATURE OF SODIUM EXCESS OBJECTS

Several studies have reported the presence of sodium excess objects having neutral atomic absorption lines at $5895{\AA}$ (NaD) and $8190{\AA}$ that are deeper than expected based on stellar population models that match the stellar continuum. The origin of these lines is therefore hotly debated. van Dokkum & Conroy proposed that low-mass stars (0.3M) are more prevalent in massive early-type galaxies, which may lead to a strong NaI 8190 line strength. It is necessary to test this prediction, however, against other prominent optical line indices such as NaD, Mgb, and Fe5270, which can be measured with a significantly higher signal-to-noise ratio than NaI 8190. We identified a new sample of roughly one thousand NaD excess objects (NEOs; ~8% of galaxies in the sample) based on NaD line strength in the redshift range 0.00${\alpha}$-enhanced" ([${\alpha}/Fe$] ~ 0.3), "metal-rich" ([Z/H] ~ 0.3), and, especially, "Na-enhanced" ([Na/Fe] ~ 0.3).