The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies

By P. Santini, R. Maiolino, B. Magnelli, D. Lutz, A. Lamastra, G. Causi, S. Eales, P. Andreani, S. Berta, V. Buat and 29 more. 2013

219 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use deep Herschel observations taken with both PACS and SPIRE imaging cameras to estimate the dust mass of a sample of galaxies extracted from the GOODS-S, GOODS-N and the COSMOS fields. We divide the redshift–stellar mass (Mstar)–star formation rate (SFR) parameter space into small bins and investigate average properties over this grid. In the first part of the work we investigate the scaling relations between dust mass, stellar mass and SFR out to z = 2.5. No clear evolution of the dust mass with redshift is observed at a given SFR and stellar mass. We find a tight correlation between the SFR and the dust mass, which, under reasonableassumptions, is likely a consequence of the Schmidt-Kennicutt (S-K) relation. The previously observed correlation between the stellar content and the dust content flattens or sometimes disappears when considering galaxies with the same SFR. Our finding suggests that most of the correlation between dust mass and stellar mass obtained by previous studies is likely a consequence of the correlation between the dust mass and the SFR combined with the main sequence, i.e., the tight relation observed between the stellar mass and the SFR and followed by the majority of star-forming galaxies. We then investigate the gas content as inferred from dust mass measurements. We convert the dust mass into gas mass by assuming that the dust-to-gas ratio scales linearly with the gas metallicity (as supported by many observations). For normal star-forming galaxies (on the main sequence) the inferred relation between the SFR and the gas mass (integrated S-K relation) broadly agrees with the results of previous studies based on CO measurements, despite the completely different approaches. We observe that all galaxies in the sample follow, within uncertainties, the same S-K relation. However, when investigated in redshift intervals, the S-K relation shows a moderate, but significant redshift evolution. The bulk of the galaxy population at z ~ 2 converts gas into stars with an efficiency (star formation efficiency, SFE = SFR/Mgas, equal to the inverse of the depletion time) about 5 times higher than at z ~ 0. However, it is not clear what fraction of such variation of the SFE is due to an intrinsic redshift evolution and what fraction is simply a consequence of high-z galaxies having, on average, higher SFR, combined with the super-linear slope of the S-K relation (while other studies find a linear slope). We confirm that the gas fraction (fgas = Mgas/(Mgas + Mstar)) decreases with stellar mass and increases with the SFR. We observe no evolution with redshift once Mstarand SFR are fixed. We explain these trends by introducing a universal relation between gas fraction, stellar mass and SFR that does not evolve with redshift, at least out to z ~ 2.5. Galaxies move across this relation as their gas content evolves across the cosmic epochs. We use the 3D fundamental fgas–Mstar–SFR relation, along with the evolution of the main sequence with redshift, to estimate the evolution of the gas fraction in the average population of galaxies as a function of redshift and as a function of stellar mass: we find that Mstar ≳ 1011 M⊙ galaxies show the strongest evolution at z ≳ 1.3 and a flatter trend at lower redshift, while fgas decreases more regularly over the entire redshift range probed in Mstar ≲ 1011 M⊙ galaxies, in agreement with a downsizing scenario.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/513676603decb1d5b8e5f3442b7961d9ad685655

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Citations in the corpus

PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, methodology): “2013, Santini et al. 2014, Sargent et al. 2014, G15, Scoville et al. 2016, 2017).”
The Horizon-AGN Simulation: Morphological Diversity of Galaxies ,Promoted by AGN Feedback (2016, background): “As galaxies are more gas-rich at high redshift (Santini et al. 2014), they are also more likely to have a disc of stars built from the net rotation of the gas, rather than to have a dispersion-dominated stellar disc.”
Molecular hydrogen abundances of galaxies in the EAGLE simulations (2015, methodology): “There is also a wealth of literature using dust mass as a proxy for H2 mass through the dust-to-gas mass ratio dependence on metallicity (e.g. Boselli, Lequeux & Gavazzi 2002; Santini et al. 2014; Swinbank et al. 2014; Béthermin et al. 2015).”
Evolution of the dust emission of massive galaxies up to z=4 and constraints on their dominant mode of star formation (2014, methodology): “Our approach is thus different from Santini et al. (2014) who explore in detail how the SEDs evolve at z < 2.5 in the SFR-M plane using a combination of UV-derived and 24 μm-derived SFRs.”
A TURNOVER IN THE GALAXY MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR FORMATION AT M* ∼ 1010 M☉ FOR REDSHIFTS z < 1.3 (2015, methodology): “Another method to estimate gas content is to measure the dust mass from far-infrared or submillimeter photometry and convert to gas masses using an assumed gas-to-dust ratio (e.g. Magdis et al. 2012; Santini et al. 2014; Scoville et al. 2014).”
The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, methodology): “The ‘no-acc’ model predicts dust masses slightly lower than found by Santini et al. (2014), but is in good agreement with the observations by da Cunha et al. (2015) and Mancini et al. (2015).”
Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, methodology): “…(RJ) dust continuum emission, and applying the calibration of this technique, developed in Scoville et al. (2016) (a brief summary is provided here in Section 4 and Appendix A) (see also (Magnelli et al. 2014; Santini et al. 2014; Genzel et al. 2015; Schinnerer et al. 2016; Berta et al. 2016)).”
COMBINED CO AND DUST SCALING RELATIONS OF DEPLETION TIME AND MOLECULAR GAS FRACTIONS WITH COSMIC TIME, SPECIFIC STAR-FORMATION RATE, AND STELLAR MASS (2014, methodology): “A sensitive and straightforward, robust test of the dependence of αCO on sSFR,z and M* can be derived from the well determined dependence of dust temperature on sSFR/sSFR(ms,z,M*) in the Herschel dust data of Magnelli et al. (2014) (see also Magdis et al. 2012b, Santini et al. 2014).”
Planckintermediate results (2016, background): “However, this additional contribution would be sub-dominant at λ ≥ 100 µm and so would not significantly change the derived temperature and mass of the cold dust, which corresponds to the bulk of the dust mass in galaxies (Cortese et al. 2012; Davies et al. 2012; Santini et al. 2014).”
REGULARITY UNDERLYING COMPLEXITY: A REDSHIFT-INDEPENDENT DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTINUOUS VARIATION OF GALAXY-SCALE MOLECULAR GAS PROPERTIES IN THE MASS-STAR FORMATION RATE PLANE (2013, unknown): “…e.g., when discussing the properties of SFGs and AGN in general (e.g., Elbaz et al. 2011, Whitaker et al. 2012, Mullaney et al. 2012b, Rosario et al. 2013), and in particular also gas and dust properties (e.g., Magdis et al. 2012b, Saintonge et al. 2012, Santini et al. 2014, Magnelli et al. 2014).”
Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “Note that recent work on Herschel samples of modest star formers at 0.2 < z < 2 have found tight correlations between dust masses and stellar mass (e.g. Dunne et al., 2011; Buat et al., 2012; Magdis et al., 2012b) or specific star-formation rate, sSFR (Santini et al., 2014).”
The assembly of ‘normal’ galaxies at z ∼ 7 probed by ALMA (2015, background): “Indeed, it has been shown that the S-K law evolves at high redshift, in the sense that for a given CO luminosity, or for a given gas content, high-z galaxies are characterized by higher SFR than local galaxies (Tacconi et al. 2013; Santini et al. 2014).”
CO excitation of normal star forming galaxies out to $z=1.5$ as regulated by the properties of their interstellar medium (2014, background): “…de Bure interferometer (Daddi et al 2008; 2010a; D10 hereafter; Tacconi et al 2010; 2013; Geach et al 2011) and confirmed by gas mass estimates obtained via the conversion of dust masses (Magdis et al 2011; 2012; Santini et al 2014; Scoville et al 2014; Magnelli et al 2013; Genzel et al 2014).”
The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, background): “…gas accretion from the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), while MS outliers, also called starbursts, seem to be triggered by mergers and form stars with high efficiency, although this view is currently debated (e.g. Narayanan et al. 2012; Kennicutt & Evans 2012; Santini et al. 2014; Mancuso et al. 2016).”
The Herschel view of the dominant mode of galaxy growth from z = 4 to the present day (2014, background): “…of galactic gas reservoirs yield gas fractions evolving from about 10% in the local Universe (Leroy et al. 2008) up to 60% at z 3 (Tacconi et al. 2010; Daddi et al. 2010; Geach et al. 2011; Magdis et al. 2012; Saintonge et al. 2013; Santini et al. 2014; Genzel et al. 2015; Béthermin et al. 2015).”
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, methodology): “Tacconi et al. (2013) found a mean gas depletion time of ∼ 7× 108 yrs for a sample of 53 galaxies with CO at z = 1 to 2.5 and Santini et al. (2014) found ∼ 1− 3× 108 yrs for a large sample using dust continuum measurements from Herschel (see their Figure 7).”
Ionization state of inter-stellar medium in galaxies: evolution, SFR-M * -Z dependence, and ionizing photon escape (2013, result): “We also note that this picture would be consistent with the observational fact that gas fraction of star-forming galaxies increases with redshift, or more properly, with sSFR (e.g. Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013; Santini et al. 2014).”