scholarly journals The evolution of rest-frame UV properties, Ly α EWs, and the SFR–stellar mass relation at z ∼ 2–6 for SC4K LAEs

2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Santos ◽  
D Sobral ◽  
J Matthee ◽  
J Calhau ◽  
E da Cunha ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We explore deep rest-frame UV to FIR data in the COSMOS field to measure the individual spectral energy distributions (SED) of the ∼4000 SC4K (Sobral et al.) Lyman α (Ly α) emitters (LAEs) at z ∼ 2–6. We find typical stellar masses of 109.3 ± 0.6 M⊙ and star formation rates (SFR) of SFR$_{\rm SED}=4.4^{+10.5}_{-2.4}$ M⊙ yr−1 and SFR$_{\rm Ly\,\alpha }=5.9^{+6.3}_{-2.6}$ M⊙ yr−1, combined with very blue UV slopes of $\beta =-2.1^{+0.5}_{-0.4}$, but with significant variations within the population. MUV and β are correlated in a similar way to UV-selected sources, but LAEs are consistently bluer. This suggests that LAEs are the youngest and/or most dust-poor subset of the UV-selected population. We also study the Ly α rest-frame equivalent width (EW0) and find 45 ‘extreme’ LAEs with EW0 > 240 Å (3σ), implying a low number density of (7 ± 1) × 10−7 Mpc−3. Overall, we measure little to no evolution of the Ly α EW0 and scale length parameter (w0), which are consistently high (EW$_0=140^{+280}_{-70}$ Å, $w_0=129^{+11}_{-11}$ Å) from z ∼ 6 to z ∼ 2 and below. However, w0 is anticorrelated with MUV and stellar mass. Our results imply that sources selected as LAEs have a high Ly α escape fraction (fesc,Ly α) irrespective of cosmic time, but fesc,Ly α is still higher for UV-fainter and lower mass LAEs. The least massive LAEs (<109.5 M⊙) are typically located above the star formation ‘main sequence’ (MS), but the offset from the MS decreases towards z ∼ 6 and towards 1010 M⊙. Our results imply a lack of evolution in the properties of LAEs across time and reveals the increasing overlap in properties of LAEs and UV-continuum selected galaxies as typical star-forming galaxies at high redshift effectively become LAEs.

2020 ◽  
Vol 492 (4) ◽  
pp. 5592-5606 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Katsianis ◽  
V Gonzalez ◽  
D Barrientos ◽  
X Yang ◽  
C D P Lagos ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT There is a severe tension between the observed star formation rate (SFR)–stellar mass (M⋆) relations reported by different authors at z = 1–4. In addition, the observations have not been successfully reproduced by state-of-the-art cosmological simulations that tend to predict a factor of 2–4 smaller SFRs at a fixed M⋆. We examine the evolution of the SFR–M⋆ relation of z = 1–4 galaxies using the skirt simulated spectral energy distributions of galaxies sampled from the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments simulations. We derive SFRs and stellar masses by mimicking different observational techniques. We find that the tension between observed and simulated SFR–M⋆ relations is largely alleviated if similar methods are used to infer the galaxy properties. We find that relations relying on infrared wavelengths (e.g. 24 ${\rm \, \mu m}$, MIPS – 24, 70, and 160 ${\rm \, \mu m}$ or SPIRE – 250, 350, and 500 ${\rm \, \mu m}$) have SFRs that exceed the intrinsic relation by 0.5 dex. Relations that rely on the spectral energy distribution fitting technique underpredict the SFRs at a fixed stellar mass by −0.5 dex at z ∼ 4 but overpredict the measurements by 0.3 dex at z ∼ 1. Relations relying on dust-corrected rest-frame ultraviolet luminosities, are flatter since they overpredict/underpredict SFRs for low/high star-forming objects and yield deviations from the intrinsic relation from 0.10 to −0.13 dex at z ∼ 4. We suggest that the severe tension between different observational studies can be broadly explained by the fact that different groups employ different techniques to infer their SFRs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (1) ◽  
pp. 948-956
Author(s):  
S M Randriamampandry ◽  
M Vaccari ◽  
K M Hess

ABSTRACT We investigate the relationship between the environment and the galaxy main sequence (the relationship between stellar mass and star formation rate), as well as the relationship between the environment and radio luminosity ($P_{\rm 1.4\, GHz}$), to shed new light on the effects of the environment on galaxies. We use the VLA-COSMOS 3-GHz catalogue, which consists of star-forming galaxies and quiescent galaxies (active galactic nuclei) in three different environments (field, filament, cluster) and for three different galaxy types (satellite, central, isolated). We perform for the first time a comparative analysis of the distribution of star-forming galaxies with respect to the main-sequence consensus region from the literature, taking into account galaxy environment and using radio observations at 0.1 ≤ z ≤ 1.2. Our results corroborate that the star formation rate is declining with cosmic time, which is consistent with the literature. We find that the slope of the main sequence for different z and M* bins is shallower than the main-sequence consensus, with a gradual evolution towards higher redshift bins, irrespective of environment. We see no trends for star formation rate in either environment or galaxy type, given the large errors. In addition, we note that the environment does not seem to be the cause of the flattening of the main sequence at high stellar masses for our sample.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S292) ◽  
pp. 289-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Pannella ◽  
D. Elbaz ◽  
E. Daddi

AbstractWe quantitatively explore in a unbiased way the evolution of dust attenuation up to z ≈ 4 as a function of galaxy properties. We have used one of the deepest datasets available at present, in the GOODS-N field, to select a star forming galaxy sample and robustly measure galaxy redshifts, star formation rates, stellar masses and UV restframe properties. Our main results can be summarized as follows: i) we confirm that galaxy stellar mass is a main driver of UV dust attenuation in star forming galaxies: more massive galaxies are more dust attenuated than less massive ones; ii) strikingly, we find that the correlation does not evolve with redshift: the amount of dust attenuation is the same at all cosmic epochs for a fixed stellar mass; iii) this finding explains why and how the SFR–AUV relation evolves with redshift: the same amount of star formation is less attenuated at higher redshift because it is hosted in less massive galaxies; iv) combining our finding with results from line emission surveys, we confirm that line reddening is larger than continuum reddening, at least up to z ≈ 1.5; v) given the redshift evolution of the mass-metallicity relation, we predict that star forming galaxies at a fixed metal content are more attenuated at high redshift. Finally, we explored the correlation between UV dust attenuation and the spectral slope: vi) the correlation is evolving with redshift with star forming galaxies at lower redshift having redder spectra than higher redshift ones for the same amount of dust attenuation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (S321) ◽  
pp. 273-273
Author(s):  
C. Catalán-Torrecilla ◽  
A. Gil de Paz ◽  
A. Castillo-Morales ◽  
J. Méndez-Abreu ◽  
S. Pascual ◽  
...  

AbstractExploring the spatial distribution of the star formation rate (SFR) in nearby galaxies is essential to understand their evolution through cosmic time. With this aim in mind, we use a representative sample that contains a variety of morphological types, the CALIFA Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) sample. Previous to this work, we have verified that our extinction-corrected Hα measurements successfully reproduce the values derived from other SFR tracers such as Hαobs + IR or UVobs + IR (Catalán-Torrecilla et al. 2015).Now, we go one step further applying 2-dimensional photometric decompositions (Méndez-Abreu et al. (2008), Méndez-Abreu et al. (2014)) over these datacubes. This method allows us to obtain the amount of SFR in the central part (bulge or nuclear source), the bar and the disk, separately. First, we determine the light coming from each component as the ratio between the luminosity in every component (bulge, bar or disk) and the total luminosity of the galaxy. Then, for each galaxy we multiply the IFS datacubes by these previous factors to recover the luminosity in each component. Finally, we derive the spectrum associated to each galaxy component integrating the spatial information in the weighted datacube using an elliptical aperture covering the whole galaxy.2D photometric decomposition applied over 3D datacubes will give us a more detailed understanding of the role that disks play in more massive galaxies. Knowing if the disks in more massive SF galaxies have on average a lower or higher level of star formation activity and how these results are affected by the presence of nuclear bars are still open questions that we can now solve. We describe the behavior of these components in the SFR vs. stellar mass diagram. In particular, we highlight the role of the disks and their contribution to both the integrated SFR for the whole galaxy and the SFR in the disk at different stellar masses in the SFR vs. stellar mass diagram together with their relative position to the star forming Main Sequence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 501 (2) ◽  
pp. 2231-2249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlyn Shin ◽  
Chun Ly ◽  
Matthew A Malkan ◽  
Sangeeta Malhotra ◽  
Mithi de los Reyes ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Extragalactic studies have demonstrated that there is a moderately tight (≈0.3 dex) relationship between galaxy stellar mass (M⋆) and star formation rate (SFR) that holds for star-forming galaxies at M⋆ ∼ 3 × 108–1011 M⊙, i.e. the ‘star formation main sequence’. However, it has yet to be determined whether such a relationship extends to even lower mass galaxies, particularly at intermediate or higher redshifts. We present new results using observations for 714 narrow-band H α-selected galaxies with stellar masses between 106 and 1010 M⊙ (average of 108.2 M⊙) at z ≈ 0.07–0.5. These galaxies have sensitive ultraviolet (UV) to near-infrared photometric measurements and optical spectroscopy. The latter allows us to correct our H α SFRs for dust attenuation using Balmer decrements. Our study reveals that: (1) for low-SFR galaxies, our H α SFRs systematically underpredict compared to far-UV measurements, consistent with other studies; (2) at a given stellar mass (≈108 M⊙), log (specific SFR) evolves as A log (1 + z) with A = 5.26 ± 0.75, and on average, specific SFR increases with decreasing stellar mass; (3) the SFR–M⋆ relation holds for galaxies down to ∼106 M⊙ (∼1.5 dex below previous studies), and over lookback times of up to 5 Gyr, follows a redshift-dependent relation of log (SFR) ∝ α log (M⋆/M⊙) + β z with α = 0.60 ± 0.01 and β = 1.86 ± 0.07; and (4) the observed dispersion in the SFR–M⋆ relation at low stellar masses is ≈0.3 dex. Accounting for survey selection effects using simulated galaxies, we estimate that the true dispersion is ≈0.5 dex.


2019 ◽  
Vol 631 ◽  
pp. A156 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Díaz-García ◽  
A. J. Cenarro ◽  
C. López-Sanjuan ◽  
I. Ferreras ◽  
M. Cerviño ◽  
...  

Aims. Our aim is to determine the distribution of stellar population parameters (extinction, age, metallicity, and star formation rates) of quiescent galaxies within the rest-frame stellar mass–colour diagrams and UVJ colour–colour diagrams corrected for extinction up to z ∼ 1. These novel diagrams reduce the contamination in samples of quiescent galaxies owing to dust-reddened galaxies, and they provide useful constraints on stellar population parameters only using rest-frame colours and/or stellar mass. Methods. We set constraints on the stellar population parameters of quiescent galaxies combining the ALHAMBRA multi-filter photo-spectra with our fitting code for spectral energy distribution, MUlti-Filter FITting (MUFFIT), making use of composite stellar population models based on two independent sets of simple stellar population (SSP) models. The extinction obtained by MUFFIT allowed us to remove dusty star-forming (DSF) galaxies from the sample of red UVJ galaxies. The distributions of stellar population parameters across these rest-frame diagrams are revealed after the dust correction and are fitted by LOESS, a bi-dimensional and locally weighted regression method, to reduce uncertainty effects. Results. Quiescent galaxy samples defined via classical UVJ diagrams are typically contaminated by a ∼20% fraction of DSF galaxies. A significant part of the galaxies in the green valley are actually obscured star-forming galaxies (∼30–65%). Consequently, the transition of galaxies from the blue cloud to the red sequence, and hence the related mechanisms for quenching, seems to be much more efficient and faster than previously reported. The rest-frame stellar mass–colour and UVJ colour–colour diagrams are useful for constraining the age, metallicity, extinction, and star formation rate of quiescent galaxies by only their redshift, rest-frame colours, and/or stellar mass. Dust correction plays an important role in understanding how quiescent galaxies are distributed in these diagrams and is key to performing a pure selection of quiescent galaxies via intrinsic colours.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S352) ◽  
pp. 342-346
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Bunker

AbstractI present an overview of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a joint program of the JWST/NIRCam and NIRSpec Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) teams involving 950 hours of observation. We will target two well-studied fields with excellent supporting data (e.g., from HST-CANDELS): GOODS-North and South, including the Ultra Deep Field. The science goal of JADES is to chart galaxy evolution at z > 2, and potentially out to z > 10, using the rest-frame optical and near-IR though observations from ≍ 1–5μm. Multi-colour NIRCam imaging with 9 filters will enable photometric redshifts and the application of the Lyman break technique out to unprecedented distances. NIRSpec spectroscopy (with spectral resolving powers of R = 100, 1000 & 2700) will measure secure spectroscopic redshifts of the photometrically-selected population, as well as stellar continuum slopes in the UV rest-frame, and hence study the role of dust, stellar population age, and other effects. Measuring emission lines can constrain the dust extinction, star formation rates, metallicity, chemical abundances, ionization and excitation mechanism in high redshift galaxies. Coupling NIRCam and NIRSpec observations will determine stellar populations (age, star formation histories, abundances) of galaxies and provide the information to correct their broad-band spectral energy distribution for likely line contamination. Potentially we can search for signatures of Population III stars such as HeII. We can address the contribution of star-forming galaxies at z > 7 to reionization by determining the faint end slope of the luminosity function and investigating the escape fraction of ionizing photons by comparing the UV stellar continuum with the Balmer-line fluxes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 492 (1) ◽  
pp. 1492-1512
Author(s):  
S Gillman ◽  
A L Tiley ◽  
A M Swinbank ◽  
C M Harrison ◽  
Ian Smail ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present an analysis of the gas dynamics of star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 1.5 using data from the KMOS Galaxy Evolution Survey. We quantify the morphology of the galaxies using HSTcandels imaging parametrically and non-parametrically. We combine the H α dynamics from KMOS with the high-resolution imaging to derive the relation between stellar mass (M*) and stellar specific angular momentum (j*). We show that high-redshift star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 1.5 follow a power-law trend in specific stellar angular momentum with stellar mass similar to that of local late-type galaxies of the form j*  ∝  M$_*^{0.53\, \pm \, 0.10}$. The highest specific angular momentum galaxies are mostly disc-like, although generally both peculiar morphologies and disc-like systems are found across the sequence of specific angular momentum at a fixed stellar mass. We explore the scatter within the j* – M* plane and its correlation with both the integrated dynamical properties of a galaxy (e.g. velocity dispersion, Toomre Qg, H α star formation rate surface density ΣSFR) and its parametrized rest-frame UV / optical morphology (e.g. Sérsic index, bulge to total ratio, clumpiness, asymmetry, and concentration). We establish that the position in the j* – M* plane is strongly correlated with the star-formation surface density and the clumpiness of the stellar light distribution. Galaxies with peculiar rest-frame UV / optical morphologies have comparable specific angular momentum to disc- dominated galaxies of the same stellar mass, but are clumpier and have higher star formation rate surface densities. We propose that the peculiar morphologies in high-redshift systems are driven by higher star formation rate surface densities and higher gas fractions leading to a more clumpy interstellar medium.


Author(s):  
Ryley Hill Scott Chapman ◽  
Kedar A Phadke ◽  
Manuel Aravena ◽  
Melanie Archipley ◽  
Matthew L N Ashby ◽  
...  

Abstract The protocluster SPT2349−56 at z  =  4.3 contains one of the most actively star-forming cores known, yet constraints on the total stellar mass of this system are highly uncertain. We have therefore carried out deep optical and infrared observations of this system, probing rest-frame ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths. Using the positions of the spectroscopically-confirmed protocluster members, we identify counterparts and perform detailed source deblending, allowing us to fit spectral energy distributions in order to estimate stellar masses. We show that the galaxies in SPT2349−56 have stellar masses proportional to their high star-formation rates, consistent with other protocluster galaxies and field submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) around redshift 4. The galaxies in SPT2349−56 have on average lower molecular gas-to-stellar mass fractions and depletion timescales than field SMGs, although with considerable scatter. We construct the stellar-mass function for SPT2349−56 and compare it to the stellar-mass function of z  =  1 galaxy clusters, finding consistent shapes between the two. We measure rest-frame galaxy ultraviolet half-light radii from our HST-F160W imaging, finding that on average the galaxies in our sample are similar in size to typical star-forming galaxies at these redshifts. However, the brightest HST-detected galaxy in our sample, found near the luminosity-weighted centre of the protocluster core, remains unresolved at this wavelength. Hydrodynamical simulations predict that the core galaxies will quickly merge into a brightest cluster galaxy, thus our observations provide a direct view of the early formation mechanisms of this class of object.


2019 ◽  
Vol 490 (3) ◽  
pp. 3196-3233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalisa Pillepich ◽  
Dylan Nelson ◽  
Volker Springel ◽  
Rüdiger Pakmor ◽  
Paul Torrey ◽  
...  

Abstract We present a new cosmological, magnetohydrodynamical simulation for galaxy formation: TNG50, the third and final instalment of the IllustrisTNG project. TNG50 evolves 2 × 21603 dark matter particles and gas cells in a volume 50 comoving Mpc across. It hence reaches a numerical resolution typical of zoom-in simulations, with a baryonic element mass of $8.5\times 10^4\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ and an average cell size of 70–140 pc in the star-forming regions of galaxies. Simultaneously, TNG50 samples ∼700 (6500) galaxies with stellar masses above $10^{10} \, (10^8)\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ at $z$ = 1. Here we investigate the structural and kinematical evolution of star-forming galaxies across cosmic time (0 ≲ $z$ ≲ 6). We quantify their sizes, disc heights, 3D shapes, and degree of rotational versus dispersion-supported motions as traced by rest-frame V-band light (i.e. roughly stellar mass) and by $\rm H\,\alpha$ light (i.e. star-forming and dense gas). The unprecedented resolution of TNG50 enables us to model galaxies with sub-kpc half-light radii and with ≲300-pc disc heights. Coupled with the large-volume statistics, we characterize a diverse, redshift- and mass-dependent structural and kinematical morphological mix of galaxies all the way to early epochs. Our model predicts that for star-forming galaxies the fraction of disc-like morphologies, based on 3D stellar shapes, increases with both cosmic time and galaxy stellar mass. Gas kinematics reveal that the vast majority of $10^{9-11.5}\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ star-forming galaxies are rotationally supported discs for most cosmic epochs (Vrot/σ > 2–3, $z$ ≲ 5), being dynamically hotter at earlier epochs ($z$ ≳ 1.5). Despite large velocity dispersion at high redshift, cold and dense gas in galaxies predominantly arranges in disky or elongated shapes at all times and masses; these gaseous components exhibit rotationally dominated motions far exceeding the collisionless stellar bodies.


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