Spectral classification of emission-line galaxies from the Sloan Digital
  Sky Survey. II. A supplementary diagnostic for AGNs using the Dn(4000) index
  In this paper we present a classification of emission-line galaxies at
intermediate and high redshifts (0.52.5 for near-infrared spectra), using the
Dn(4000) index as a supplementary diagnostic. Our goal is to complement the
diagnostic based only on emission-line ratios from the blue part of the
spectra, which suffer from some limitations for the classification of Seyfert 2
and composite galaxies. We used a sample of 89 379 galaxies with a good
signal-to-noise ratio from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (data release 7). Using
the classification scheme presented in Paper I, we classified these galaxies
with a diagnostic diagram involving the [Oiii]5007 /Hbeta and [Oii]3726+3729
/Hbeta emission-line ratios. Then we derived a supplementary diagnostic
involving Dn(4000) to improve this classification, in the regions where objects
of different types are mixed. To show the validity of our spectral
classification we established success-rate and contamination charts, then we
compared our results to those obtained with the reference classification that
was scheme obtained also using Halpha, [Nii]6584, and [Sii]6717+6731 emission
lines. We show that our supplementary classification based on the Dn(4000)
index allows to separate unambiguously star-forming galaxies from Seyfert 2 in
the region where they were mixed in Paper I. It also significantly reduces the
region where star-forming galaxies are mixed with composites.
