scholarly journals A redshift-dependent IRX–β dust attenuation relation for TNG50 galaxies

2020 ◽  
Vol 497 (4) ◽  
pp. 4773-4794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schulz ◽  
Gergö Popping ◽  
Annalisa Pillepich ◽  
Dylan Nelson ◽  
Mark Vogelsberger ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We study the relation between the UV slope, β, and the ratio between the infrared- and UV luminosities (IRX) of galaxies from TNG50, the latest installment of the IllustrisTNG galaxy formation simulations. We select 7280 star-forming main-sequence (SFMS) galaxies with stellar mass ≥109 M⊙ at redshifts 0 ≤ z ≤ 4 and perform radiative transfer with skirt to model effects of interstellar medium dust on the emitted stellar light. Assuming a Milky Way dust type and a dust-to-metal ratio of 0.3, we find that TNG50 SFMS galaxies generally agree with observationally derived IRX–β relations at z ≲ 1. However, we find a redshift-dependent systematic offset with respect to empirically derived local relations, with the TNG50 IRX–β relation shifting towards lower β and steepening at higher redshifts. This is partially driven by variations in the dust-uncorrected UV slope of galaxies, due to different star formation histories of galaxies selected at different cosmic epochs; we suggest the remainder of the effect is caused by differences in the effective dust attenuation curves of galaxies as a function of redshift. We find a typical galaxy-to-galaxy variation of 0.3 dex in infrared excess (IRX) at fixed β, correlated with intrinsic galaxy properties: galaxies with higher star formation rates, star formation efficiencies, gas metallicities and stellar masses exhibit larger IRX values. We demonstrate a degeneracy between stellar age, dust geometry, and dust composition: z = 4 galaxies with a Small Magellanic Cloud dust type follow the same IRX–β relation as low-redshift galaxies with MW dust. We provide a redshift-dependent fitting function for the IRX–β relation for MW dust based on our models.

2019 ◽  
Vol 489 (1) ◽  
pp. 1265-1290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Mancini ◽  
Emanuele Daddi ◽  
Stéphanie Juneau ◽  
Alvio Renzini ◽  
Giulia Rodighiero ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We investigate the nature of star-forming galaxies with reduced specific star formation rate (sSFR) and high stellar masses, those ‘green valley’ objects that seemingly cause a reported bending, or flattening, of the star-forming main sequence. The fact that such objects host large bulges recently led some to suggest that the internal formation of bulges was a late event that induced the sSFRs of massive galaxies to drop in a slow downfall, and thus the main sequence to bend. We have studied in detail a sample of 10 galaxies at 0.45 < z < 1 with secure SFR from Herschel, deep Keck optical spectroscopy, and HST imaging from CANDELS allowing us to perform multiwavelength bulge to disc decomposition, and to derive star formation histories for the separated bulge and disc components. We find that the bulges hosted in these systems below main sequence are virtually all maximally old, with ages approaching the age of the Universe at the time of observation, while discs are young (〈 T50〉 ∼ 1.5 Gyr). We conclude that, at least based on our sample, the bending of the main sequence is, for a major part, due to rejuvenation, and we disfavour mechanisms that postulate the internal formation of bulges at late times. The very old stellar ages of our bulges suggest a number density of early-type galaxies at z = 1–3 higher than actually observed. If confirmed, this might represent one of the first direct validations of hierarchical assembly of bulges at high redshifts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 644 ◽  
pp. A144
Author(s):  
D. Donevski ◽  
A. Lapi ◽  
K. Małek ◽  
D. Liu ◽  
C. Gómez-Guijarro ◽  
...  

The dust-to-stellar mass ratio (Mdust/M⋆) is a crucial, albeit poorly constrained, parameter for improving our understanding of the complex physical processes involved in the production of dust, metals, and stars in galaxy evolution. In this work, we explore trends of Mdust/M⋆ with different physical parameters and using observations of 300 massive dusty star-forming galaxies detected with ALMA up to z ≈ 5. Additionally, we interpret our findings with different models of dusty galaxy formation. We find that Mdust/M⋆ evolves with redshift, stellar mass, specific star formation rates, and integrated dust size, but that evolution is different for main-sequence galaxies than it is for starburst galaxies. In both galaxy populations, Mdust/M⋆ increases until z ∼ 2, followed by a roughly flat trend towards higher redshifts, suggesting efficient dust growth in the distant universe. We confirm that the inverse relation between Mdust/M⋆ and M⋆ holds up to z ≈ 5 and can be interpreted as an evolutionary transition from early to late starburst phases. We demonstrate that the Mdust/M⋆ in starbursts reflects the increase in molecular gas fraction with redshift and attains the highest values for sources with the most compact dusty star formation. State-of-the-art cosmological simulations that include self-consistent dust growth have the capacity to broadly reproduce the evolution of Mdust/M⋆ in main-sequence galaxies, but underestimating it in starbursts. The latter is found to be linked to lower gas-phase metallicities and longer dust-growth timescales relative to observations. The results of phenomenological models based on the main-sequence and starburst dichotomy as well as analytical models that include recipes for rapid metal enrichment are consistent with our observations. Therefore, our results strongly suggest that high Mdust/M⋆ is due to rapid dust grain growth in the metal-enriched interstellar medium. This work highlights the multi-fold benefits of using Mdust/M⋆ as a diagnostic tool for: (1) disentangling main-sequence and starburst galaxies up to z ∼ 5; (2) probing the evolutionary phase of massive objects; and (3) refining the treatment of the dust life cycle in simulations.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (4) ◽  
pp. 5596-5605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin H W Cook ◽  
Luca Cortese ◽  
Barbara Catinella ◽  
Aaron Robotham

ABSTRACT We use our catalogue of structural decomposition measurements for the extended GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (xGASS) to study the role of bulges both along and across the galaxy star-forming main sequence (SFMS). We show that the slope in the sSFR–M⋆ relation flattens by ∼0.1 dex per decade in M⋆ when re-normalizing specifice star formation rate (sSFR) by disc stellar mass instead of total stellar mass. However, recasting the sSFR–M⋆ relation into the framework of only disc-specific quantities shows that a residual trend remains against disc stellar mass with equivalent slope and comparable scatter to that of the total galaxy relation. This suggests that the residual declining slope of the SFMS is intrinsic to the disc components of galaxies. We further investigate the distribution of bulge-to-total ratios (B/T) as a function of distance from the SFMS (ΔSFRMS). At all stellar masses, the average B/T of local galaxies decreases monotonically with increasing ΔSFRMS. Contrary to previous works, we find that the upper envelope of the SFMS is not dominated by objects with a significant bulge component. This rules out a scenario in which, in the local Universe, objects with increased star formation activity are simultaneously experiencing a significant bulge growth. We suggest that much of the discrepancies between different works studying the role of bulges originate from differences in the methodology of structurally decomposing galaxies.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 492 (4) ◽  
pp. 4927-4944 ◽  
Author(s):  
M P Koprowski ◽  
K E K Coppin ◽  
J E Geach ◽  
U Dudzevičiūtė ◽  
Ian Smail ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We analyse 870 $\mu$m Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) dust continuum detections of 41 canonically selected $z$ ≃ 3 Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs), as well as 209 ALMA-undetected LBGs, in follow-up of SCUBA-2 mapping of the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) field. We find that our ALMA-bright LBGs lie significantly off the local IRX-beta relation and have relatively bluer rest-frame UV slopes (as parametrized by β), given their high values of the ‘infrared excess’ (IRX ≡ LIR/LUV), relative to the average ‘local’ IRX-β relation. We attribute this finding in part to the young ages of the underlying stellar populations but we find that the main reason behind the unusually blue UV slopes are the relatively shallow slopes of the corresponding dust attenuation curves. We show that, when stellar masses, M*, are being established via SED fitting, it is absolutely crucial to allow the attenuation curves to vary (rather than fixing it on Calzetti-like law), where we find that the inappropriate curves may underestimate the resulting stellar masses by a factor of ≃2–3× on average. In addition, we find these LBGs to have relatively high specific star-formation rates (sSFRs), dominated by the dust component, as quantified via the fraction of obscured star formation $(f_{\rm obs}\equiv {\rm SFR_{\rm IR}/{\rm SFR}_{\rm UV+IR}})$. We conclude that the ALMA-bright LBGs are, by selection, massive galaxies undergoing a burst of a star formation (large sSFRs, driven, for example, by secular or merger processes), with a likely geometrical disconnection of the dust and stars, responsible for producing shallow dust attenuation curves.


2020 ◽  
Vol 643 ◽  
pp. A4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Fudamoto ◽  
P. A. Oesch ◽  
A. Faisst ◽  
M. Béthermin ◽  
M. Ginolfi ◽  
...  

We present dust attenuation properties of spectroscopically confirmed star forming galaxies on the main sequence at a redshift of ∼4.4 − 5.8. Our analyses are based on the far infrared continuum observations of 118 galaxies at rest-frame 158 μm obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Large Program to INvestigate [CII] at Early times (ALPINE). We study the connection between the ultraviolet (UV) spectral slope (β), stellar mass (M⋆), and infrared excess (IRX = LIR/LUV). Twenty-three galaxies are individually detected in the continuum at > 3.5σ significance. We perform a stacking analysis using both detections and nondetections to study the average dust attenuation properties at z ∼ 4.4 − 5.8. The individual detections and stacks show that the IRX–β relation at z ∼ 5 is consistent with a steeper dust attenuation curve than typically found at lower redshifts (z <  4). The attenuation curve is similar to or even steeper than that of the extinction curve of the Small Magellanic Cloud. This systematic change of the IRX–β relation as a function of redshift suggests an evolution of dust attenuation properties at z >  4. Similarly, we find that our galaxies have lower IRX values, up to 1 dex on average, at a fixed mass compared to previously studied IRX–M⋆ relations at z ≲ 4, albeit with significant scatter. This implies a lower obscured fraction of star formation than at lower redshifts. Our results suggest that dust properties of UV-selected star forming galaxies at z ≳ 4 are characterised by (i) a steeper attenuation curve than at z ≲ 4, and (ii) a rapidly decreasing dust obscured fraction of star formation as a function of redshift. Nevertheless, even among this UV-selected sample, massive galaxies (log M⋆/M⊙ >  10) at z ∼ 5 − 6 already exhibit an obscured fraction of star formation of ∼45%, indicating a rapid build-up of dust during the epoch of reionization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 625 ◽  
pp. A112 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Guglielmo ◽  
B. M. Poggianti ◽  
B. Vulcani ◽  
S. Maurogordato ◽  
J. Fritz ◽  
...  

Exploiting a sample of galaxies drawn from the XXL-North multiwavelength survey, we present an analysis of the stellar population properties of galaxies at 0.1 ≤ z ≤ 0.5, by studying galaxy fractions and the star formation rate (SFR)–stellar mass (M⋆) relation. Furthermore, we exploit and compare two parametrisations of environment. When adopting a definition of “global” environment, we consider separately cluster virial (r ≤ 1r200) and outer (1r200 <  r ≤ 3r200) members and field galaxies. We also distinguish between galaxies that belong or do not belong to superclusters, but never find systematic differences between the two subgroups. When considering the “local” environment, we take into account the projected number density of galaxies in a fixed aperture of 1 Mpc in the sky. We find that regardless of the environmental definition adopted, the fraction of blue or star-forming galaxies is the highest in the field or least dense regions and the lowest in the virial regions of clusters or highest densities. Furthermore, the fraction of star-forming galaxies is higher than the fraction of blue galaxies, regardless of the environment. This result is particularly evident in the virial cluster regions, most likely reflecting the different star formation histories of galaxies in different environments. Also the overall SFR–M⋆ relation does not seem to depend on the parametrisation adopted. Nonetheless, the two definitions of environment lead to different results as far as the fraction of galaxies in transition between the star-forming main sequence and the quenched regime is concerned. In fact, using the local environment the fraction of galaxies below the main sequence is similar at low and high densities, whereas in clusters (and especially within the virial radii) a population with reduced SFR with respect to the field is observed. Our results show that the two parametrisations adopted to describe the environment have different physical meanings, i.e. are intrinsically related to different physical processes acting on galaxy populations and are able to probe different physical scales.


2019 ◽  
Vol 490 (3) ◽  
pp. 3448-3453
Author(s):  
A Paswan ◽  
Kanak Saha ◽  
A Omar

ABSTRACT We present narrow-band Hα imaging of nearby Wolf–Rayet (WR) galaxies known as a subset of starburst galaxies. The Hα images have been used to show morphology of star-forming regions in galaxies, which leads to speculate that the studied galaxies have most likely experienced merger or interaction with low luminous dwarf galaxies or H i clouds. We further derive the Hα-based star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies using our Hα observations. These SFRs are well correlated with SFRs derived using other indicators at far-ultraviolet, far-infrared, and 1.4-GHz radio wavebands. It is noticed that the infrared excess (IRX) method gives the best SFR estimates, consistent with different models predication. These models also predict that the sample galaxies have probably gone through a continuous star formation at least for 1 Gyr over which the recent (&lt;10 Myr) star formation has taken place in WR phase. This study presents main-sequence (MS) relation for nearby WR galaxies for the first time. This derived MS relation is found to be similar to previously known MS relation for normal nearby star-forming galaxies, suggesting that WR systems evolve in a similar fashion as normal star-forming galaxies evolve.


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (1) ◽  
pp. L87-L91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maan H Hani ◽  
Christopher C Hayward ◽  
Matthew E Orr ◽  
Sara L Ellison ◽  
Paul Torrey ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The correlation between galaxies’ integrated stellar masses and star formation rates (the ‘star formation main sequence’, SFMS) is a well-established scaling relation. Recently, surveys have found a relationship between the star formation rate (SFR) and stellar mass surface densities on kpc and sub-kpc scales (the ‘resolved SFMS’, rSFMS). In this work, we demonstrate that the rSFMS emerges naturally in Feedback In Realistic Environments 2 (FIRE-2) zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies. We make SFR and stellar mass maps of the simulated galaxies at a variety of spatial resolutions and star formation averaging time-scales and fit the rSFMS using multiple methods from the literature. While the absolute value of the SFMS slope (αMS) depends on the fitting method, the slope is steeper for longer star formation time-scales and lower spatial resolutions regardless of the fitting method employed. We present a toy model that quantitatively captures the dependence of the simulated galaxies’ αMS on spatial resolution and use it to illustrate how this dependence can be used to constrain the characteristic mass of star-forming clumps.


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