PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions
By L. Tacconi, R. Genzel, A. Saintonge, F. Combes, S. García-Burillo, R. Neri, A. Bolatto, Thierry Contini, N. F. Förster Schreiber, S. Lilly and 25 more. 2017
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This paper provides an update of our previous scaling relations between galaxy-integrated molecular gas masses, stellar masses, and star formation rates (SFRs), in the framework of the star formation main sequence (MS), with the main goal of testing for possible systematic effects. For this purpose our new study combines three independent methods of determining molecular gas masses from CO line fluxes, far-infrared dust spectral energy distributions, and ∼1 mm dust photometry, in a large sample of 1444 star-forming galaxies between z = 0 and 4. The sample covers the stellar mass range log(M*/M⊙) = 9.0–11.8, and SFRs relative to that on the MS, δMS = SFR/SFR(MS), from 10−1.3 to 102.2. Our most important finding is that all data sets, despite the different techniques and analysis methods used, follow the same scaling trends, once method-to-method zero-point offsets are minimized and uncertainties are properly taken into account. The molecular gas depletion time tdepl, defined as the ratio of molecular gas mass to SFR, scales as (1 + z)−0.6 × (δMS)−0.44 and is only weakly dependent on stellar mass. The ratio of molecular to stellar mass μgas depends on ( 1 + z ) 2.5 × ( δ MS ) 0.52 × ( M * ) − 0.36 , which tracks the evolution of the specific SFR. The redshift dependence of μgas requires a curvature term, as may the mass dependences of tdepl and μgas. We find no or only weak correlations of tdepl and μgas with optical size R or surface density once one removes the above scalings, but we caution that optical sizes may not be appropriate for the high gas and dust columns at high z.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/368344622f962782bdfce2a70f2df5a397767e79
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Citations in the corpus
- The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, background): “…unclear if the GMC lifecycle proceeded differently under the high-pressure and high-gas fraction conditions prevalent in high-redshift galaxies (e.g. Genzel et al. 2011; Swinbank et al. 2011, 2012; Tacconi et al. 2013, 2018), with claimed lifetimes of up to several 100 Myr (Zanella et al. 2019).”
- An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field: physical properties of 707 sub-millimetre galaxies (2019, methodology): “For comparison, we overlay the ASPECS blind CO-selected sample from Aravena et al. (2019) and the CO-detected ‘main sequence’ galaxies from the PHIBSS compilation of star-forming galaxies by Tacconi et al. (2018).”
- The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, background): “From surveys of CO line and cold dust continuum emission, it is now well established that z ∼ 1−3 SFGs have high gas mass fractions of ∼ 30%− 50% (see Tacconi et al. 2013, 2018; Carilli & Walter 2013; Genzel et al. 2015; Scoville et al. 2016, and references therein).”
- The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey (2020, methodology): “Combined with SFRs derived from UV, FIR, [CII], and Hα, this will constrain SFR efficiencies and gas depletion times, thus providing insight into the emergence and growth of massive galaxies (Tacconi et al. 2013, 2018; Genzel et al. 2015; Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. 2017).”