ON THE LACK OF EVOLUTION IN GALAXY STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY

By P. Behroozi, Risa Wechsler, C. Conroy. 2012

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Using reconstructed galaxy star formation histories, we calculate the instantaneous efficiency of galaxy star formation (i.e., the star formation rate divided by the baryon accretion rate) from z = 8 to the present day. This efficiency exhibits a clear peak near a characteristic halo mass of 1011.7 M☉, which coincides with longstanding theoretical predictions for the mass scale relevant to virial shock heating of accreted gas. Above the characteristic halo mass, the efficiency falls off as the mass to the minus four-thirds power; below the characteristic mass, the efficiency falls off at an average scaling of mass to the two-thirds power. By comparison, the shape and normalization of the efficiency change very little since z = 4. We show that a time-independent star formation efficiency simply explains the shape of the cosmic star formation rate since z = 4 in terms of dark matter accretion rates. The rise in the cosmic star formation from early times until z = 2 is especially sensitive to galaxy formation efficiency. The mass dependence of the efficiency strongly limits where most star formation occurs, with the result that two-thirds of all star formation has occurred inside halos within a factor of three of the characteristic mass, a range that includes the mass of the Milky Way.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1be90adc9cc6d1c6c070fac0400ab33a751e63a0

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Citations in the corpus

THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, methodology): “Halos in Bolshoi were identified using ROCKSTAR, a sevendimensional halo finder that uses phase space plus temporal information (Behroozi et al. 2013b).”
Planck 2013 results. XXX. Cosmic infrared background measurements and implications for star formation (2013, background): “…dark matter haloes with 1−3 1012 M , corresponding to the halo mass of maximal efficiency of star formation, as found in recent works (e.g., Béthermin et al. 2012b; Wang et al. 2013; and Behroozi et al. 2013a; and compatible with the related lensing magnification study of Hildebrandt et al. 2013).”
The dark side of galaxy colour (2013, background): “We use the z = 0 ROCKSTAR halo catalog and merger trees to model the galaxy colorhalo connection.”
Halo and subhalo demographics with Planck cosmological parameters: Bolshoi–Planck and MultiDark–Planck simulations (2016, methodology): “In this paper we use the Rockstar halo finder (Behroozi, Wechsler & Wu 2013) and Consistent Trees (Behroozi et al. 2013) to analyze results for the recent Bolshoi-Planck (BolshoiP), Small MultiDark-Planck (SMDPL) and MultiDark-Planck (MDPL) simulations based on the 2013 Planck cosmological…”
3D-HST+CANDELS: THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY SIZE–MASS DISTRIBUTION SINCE z = 3 (2014, unknown): “…mass, based on clustering measurements and abundance matching techniques, provide strong evidence that m g depends on halo mass, similarly so at diﬀerent redshifts (e.g., Conroy & Wechsler 2009; Moster et al. 2010; Behroozi et al. 2010; Wake et al. 2011; Moster et al. 2013; Behroozi et al. 2013a).”
THE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF LOCAL GROUP DWARF GALAXIES. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/WIDE FIELD PLANETARY CAMERA 2 OBSERVATIONS (2014, methodology): “…for broadly differentiating between galaxies of different morphological types, for comparing to simple models of star formation, and for tracing star formation as a function of halo mass over cosmic time (e.g., Grebel et al. 2003; Weisz et al. 2011a,b; Leitner 2012; Behroozi et al. 2013b).”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, background): “…more accurate and consistent halo finders for determining halo properties and their progenitors from large N−body cosmological simulations (e.g., Behroozi et al. 2013, and references therein) not only make possible a more accurate modelling of the galaxy-halo connection but also allow…”
Galaxy Protoclusters as Drivers of Cosmic Star Formation History in the First 2 Gyr (2017, methodology): “The SFE, however, peaks in halos of about 1012 M due to various feedback processes at both lower and higher masses (Behroozi et al. 2013a; 13 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Age of the Universe [Gyr] Moster et al. 2013).”
Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, background): “We find these results to be in good qualitative agreement at z 3 with the relations found by Behroozi et al. (2013b) in that the peak of the baryon conversion efficiency moves to higher masses at higher redshifts, the efficiency at masses larger than the peak is independent of redshift, and the…”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, methodology): “Here, we use the same redshift dependence as Behroozi et al. (2013e), but limit the maximum scatter at high redshift: σSM,obs = min(σSM,0 +σSM,zz,0.3)dex (26) For example, Grazian et al. (2015) find a scatter of∼ 0.2 dex at z = 6 in the distribution of SMs for ∼ 1011 M galaxies; this expands to 0.3…”
The star formation main sequence and stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation (2014, methodology): “The normalisation in Illustris agrees with the observational constraints from Behroozi et al. (2013b) at z = 0.”
EMERGE – an empirical model for the formation of galaxies since z ∼ 10 (2017, methodology): “Merger trees were generated using the ConsistentTrees algorithm (Behroozi et al. 2013c), providing a physically consistent evolution of halo properties across time steps.”