THE STAR FORMATION MASS SEQUENCE OUT TO z = 2.5

By K. Whitaker, P. V. van Dokkum, G. Brammer, M. Franx. 2012

603 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the star formation rate (SFR)–stellar mass (M⋆) relation in a self-consistent manner from 0 < z < 2.5 with 22,816 star-forming galaxies selected from the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey. We find a significant nonlinear slope of the relation, SFR∝M0.6⋆, and a constant observed scatter of 0.34 dex, independent of redshift and M⋆. However, if we select only blue galaxies we find a linear relation SFR∝M⋆, similar to previous results at z = 0 by Peng et al. This selection excludes red, dusty, star-forming galaxies with higher masses, which brings down the slope. By selecting on LIR/LUV (a proxy for dust obscuration) and the rest-frame U − V colors, we show that star-forming galaxies fall in three distinct regions of the log(SFR)–log(M⋆) plane: (1) actively star-forming galaxies with “normal” dust obscuration and associated colors (54% for log (M⋆) > 10 at 1 < z < 1.5), (2) red star-forming galaxies with low levels of dust obscuration and low-specific SFRs (11%), and (3) dusty, blue star-forming galaxies with high-specific SFRs (7%). The remaining 28% comprises quiescent galaxies. Galaxies on the “normal” star formation sequence show strong trends of increasing dust attenuation with stellar mass and a decreasing specific SFR, with an observed scatter of 0.25 dex. The dusty, blue galaxies reside in the upper envelope of the star formation sequence with remarkably similar spectral shapes at all masses, suggesting that the same physical process is dominating the stellar light. The red, low-dust star-forming galaxies may be in the process of shutting off and migrating to the quiescent population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50af8bd617f15641a1d2822b0bfd8ce9ea5f8add

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. R. Somerville
5. A. Dekel
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. Volker Springel
8. C. Conroy

In Instrumentation

1. L. Hernquist
2. P. Hopkins
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. R. Dav'e
5. R. Somerville
6. A. Dekel
7. C. Conroy
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• AN OBJECTIVE DEFINITION FOR THE MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2015, methodology): “A bending of the main sequence could be due to the growing fraction of the total mass being given by bulges already quenched, hence contributing mass but no star formation (e.g., Whitaker et al. 2012).”
• A POPULATION OF MASSIVE, LUMINOUS GALAXIES HOSTING HEAVILY DUST-OBSCURED GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF GRBs AS TRACERS OF COSMIC STAR FORMATION (2013, background): “This is not just a reflection of the mass difference discussed earlier (§7.1.2)—the mass-sSFR relation is nearly flat (Elbaz et al. 2007; Daddi et al. 2007; Whitaker et al. 2012), and so (at a given redshift) the apparent skew toward lower mass should not produce any comparable differences in sSFR.”
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, result): “This picture is predicted by numerical simulations and is consistent with observations of the evolving population of star-forming galaxies (e.g. Dekel et al. 2009, Bouche et al. 2010, Elbaz et al. 2011, Wuyts et al. 2011b, Whitaker et al. 2012, Lilly et al. 2013).”
• FORMING COMPACT MASSIVE GALAXIES (2015, methodology): “…formation rates were determined using the Kennicutt (1998) relation, converted to a Chabrier (2003) IMF.15 The UV luminosities come from the best-fitting Brammer et al. (2008) models atλrest = 2500 Å, and the IR luminosities are converted Spitzer/MIPS 24µm fluxes (see Whitaker et al. 2012 and Sect.”
• THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, background): “Galaxies exhibit a tight relation (∼ 0.25 dex scatter) between stellar mass and SFR out to at least z ∼ 2 (Noeske et al. 2007; Salim et al. 2007; Elbaz et al. 2007; Pannella et al. 2009; Whitaker et al. 2012; Zahid et al. 2012b; Kashino et al. 2013).”
• 3D-HST WFC3-SELECTED PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS IN THE FIVE CANDELS/3D-HST FIELDS: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR MASSES (2014, background): “…trace the evolution of the stellar mass function (e.g., Marchesini et al. 2009; Pérez-González et al. 2008), the star formation– mass relation (e.g., Whitaker et al. 2012), and the structural evolution of galaxies (e.g., Franx et al. 2008; Bell et al. 2012; Wuyts et al. 2012; van der Wel et al.…”
• A PUBLIC Ks-SELECTED CATALOG IN THE COSMOS/UltraVISTA FIELD: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR POPULATION PARAMETERS, (2013, background): “These blue-tip galaxies have colors that are similar to recently quenched galaxies, or “post star formation galaxies” (e.g., Kriek et al. 2010; Whitaker et al. 2012a) and are labelled “post-SF”.”
• The evolution of the dust temperatures of galaxies in the SFR–M∗ plane up to z ~ 2 (2013, background): “Such a curved MS, not well described by a simple power-law function, has also been observed at z ∼ 1.25 by Whitaker et al. (2012).”
• The star formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics (2018, background): “In this case, the MS is allowed to deviate from a linear trend, as in fact it does by exhibiting a turnover at about Mstars & 1010.5 M , as suggested by several observations (Karim et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Lee et al. 2015; Tomczak et al. 2016; Lee et al. 2018, see Section 4.2).”
• ISM MASSES AND THE STAR FORMATION LAW AT Z = 1 TO 6: ALMA OBSERVATIONS OF DUST CONTINUUM IN 145 GALAXIES IN THE COSMOS SURVEY FIELD (2015, background): “…specific star formation rate, (sSFR ≡ SFR/Mstellar), is roughly constant along the MS at each cosmic epoch but increases 20-fold out to z ∼ 2.5, consistent with the overall increase in the cosmic star formation rate (Hopkins & Beacom 2006; Karim et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Lee et al. 2015).”
• The star formation main sequence and stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation (2014, background): “…dex (this reflects the range of values given in Table 9 in Behroozi et al. 2013b), but the measured scatter will of course depend on the exact selection criteria for the star-forming galaxies which form the main sequence (e.g. Whitaker et al. 2012) as well as on the uncertainties in SFR indicators.”
• The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, result): “This tentative trend is in contrast with recent studies reporting no dependency on the stellar mass (Whitaker et al. 2012; Schreiber et al. 2015; Salmon et al. 2015; Kurczynski et al. 2016), although not extending to masses lower than 109M⊙(except for the latter study).”
• On the evolution and environmental dependence of the star formation rate versus stellar mass relation since z ∼ 2 (2013, background): “M∗ relation tends to be steeper for the lower-redshift samples, which isalso qualitatively consistent with previous works (e.g. Whitaker et al. 2012), but we note that the best-fit relation drawn on the plotis uncertain because our star-forming galaxy samples are not completely stellar-mass limited.”
• THE SFR–M* RELATION AND EMPIRICAL STAR FORMATION HISTORIES FROM ZFOURGE AT 0.5 < z < 4 (2015, methodology): “Another type of lookback study involves using the observed correlation between stellar mass and star-formation 2 rate, hereafter referred to as the SFR−M∗ relation (e.g. Brinchmann et al. 2004; Noeske et al. 2007; Gilbank et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Speagle et al. 2014).”
• EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, methodology): “The Whitaker et al. (2012) fits provide a good representation of the locus of SFGs in our comparison 3D-HST sample above log(M∗/M ) ∼ 10.3, encompassing our three highest mass bins comprising 85% of our sample.”
• Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector: Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129 Galaxies in the Local Universe (2016, background): “…Ilbert et al. 2013; Moustakas et al. 2013; Muzzin et al. 2013; Tomczak et al. 2014) and for the SFR– mass relationship (e.g., Brinchmann et al. 2004; Daddi et al. 2007; Noeske et al. 2007; Peng et al. 2010; Karim et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012, 2014; Speagle et al. 2014; Ilbert et al. 2015).”
• X-shooter reveals powerful outflows in z ∼ 1.5 X-ray selected obscured quasi-stellar objects (2014, methodology): “…our sources lie on or below the MS of star forming galaxies at z∼ 1.5 while both Harrison et al. (2012b) and Förster Schreiber et al. (2014) targets lie on average on the upper part or above the MS even when considering the redshift evolution of the sSFR (Whitaker et al. 2012; Karim et al. 2011).”
• PHIBSS: MOLECULAR GAS CONTENT AND SCALING RELATIONS IN z ∼ 1–3 MASSIVE, MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2012, background): “…star forming (s)BzK z=1.5-2.5 survey (McCracken et al. 2010, Mancini et al. 2011; see upper two panels in Figure 1), the CANDELS GOODS-S sample (Wuyts et al. priv. comm.; see bottom two panels in Figure 1), and the NEWFIRM mediumband survey in the AEGIS and COSMOS fields (Whitaker et al. 2012).”