PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1

By John Moustakas, A. Coil, J. Aird, M. Blanton, R. Cool, Daniel J. Eisenstein, A. Mendez, Kenneth C. Wong, G. Zhu, Stéphane Arnouts. 2013

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We measure the evolution of the stellar mass function (SMF) from z = 0–1 using multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopic redshifts from the PRism MUlti-object Survey (PRIMUS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). From PRIMUS we construct an i < 23 flux-limited sample of ∼40, 000 galaxies at z = 0.2–1.0 over five fields totaling ≈5.5 deg2, and from the SDSS we select ∼170, 000 galaxies at z = 0.01–0.2 that we analyze consistently with respect to PRIMUS to minimize systematic errors in our evolutionary measurements. We find that the SMF of all galaxies evolves relatively little since z = 1, although we do find evidence for mass assembly downsizing; we measure a ≈30% increase in the number density of ∼1010  galaxies since z ≈ 0.6, and a ≲ 10% change in the number density of all ≳ 1011  galaxies since z ≈ 1. Dividing the sample into star-forming and quiescent using an evolving cut in specific star formation rate, we find that the number density of ∼1010  star-forming galaxies stays relatively constant since z ≈ 0.6, whereas the space density of ≳ 1011  star-forming galaxies decreases by ≈50% between z ≈ 1 and z ≈ 0. Meanwhile, the number density of ∼1010  quiescent galaxies increases steeply toward low redshift, by a factor of ∼2–3 since z ≈ 0.6, while the number of massive quiescent galaxies remains approximately constant since z ≈ 1. These results suggest that the rate at which star-forming galaxies are quenched increases with decreasing stellar mass, but that the bulk of the stellar mass buildup within the quiescent population occurs around ∼1010.8 . In addition, we conclude that mergers do not appear to be a dominant channel for the stellar mass buildup of galaxies at z < 1, even among massive (≳ 1011 ) quiescent galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/602f5c1aaf5ea4cfba539e9c46344745ffa6341a

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Citations in the corpus

• Mass assembly in quiescent and star-forming galaxies since z ≃ 4 from UltraVISTA (2013, background): “The open triangles and squares correspond to the local estimates by Moustakas et al. (2013) and Baldry et al. (2012), respectively.”
• Galaxy Interactions Trigger Rapid Black Hole Growth: an unprecedented view from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, neutral): “%) of galaxies drawn the PRIMUS and VIPERS surveys, which for starforming galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 are complete to M∗ ∼ 2× 109M⊙ (Moustakas et al. 2013) and M∗ ∼ 3 × 109M⊙ (Davidzon et al. 2013), respectively.”
• THE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF LOCAL GROUP DWARF GALAXIES. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/WIDE FIELD PLANETARY CAMERA 2 OBSERVATIONS (2014, background): “…a novel probabilistic model that incorporates a wide range of data from high redshift SFRs (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2011, 2012; Bradley et al. 2012) to observations of recent star formation in the local universe (e.g., 21 Hα, UV, 24 µm; Salim et al. 2007; Kennicutt et al. 2008; Moustakas et al. 2013).”
• A remarkably flat relationship between the average star formation rate and AGN luminosity for distant X-ray AGN. (2015, methodology): “This model uses the observed redshift dependent stellar mass function (SMF) of galaxies (from Moustakas et al. 2013) in combination with the probability function of a galaxy of a given stellar mass and redshift hosting an AGN, based on measurements in Aird et al. (2012) for z 1.”
• CALIFA : a diameter-selected sample for an integral field spectroscopy galaxy survey (2014, result): “Figure 14 also shows the mass function derived from these stellar masses and the volume corrections derived above and compares it with the mass function from Moustakas et al. (2013).”
• UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, methodology): “Full details are presented in Appendices C and D. Briefly, stellar mass function (SMF) constraints include data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the PRIsm MUltiobject Survey (PRIMUS), UltraVISTA, the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), and the FourStar ”
• THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, methodology): “Stellar Mass Functions We combine many overlapping data sets (Baldry et al. 2008; Moustakas et al. 2013; Pérez-González et al. 2008; Mortlock et al. 2011; Marchesini et al. 2009; Stark et al. 2009; Bouwens et al. 2011) to constrain the evolution of the stellar mass function fromz= 0 to z= 8.”
• THE RELATION BETWEEN STAR FORMATION RATE AND STELLAR MASS FOR GALAXIES AT 3.5 ⩽ z ⩽ 6.5 IN CANDELS (2014, methodology): “We then find the posterior probability density for any parameter given an observed set of data, D, and probability density using Bayes’ theorem (see also, Moustakas et al. 2013), P (Θ′”
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: modelling the clustering and halo occupation distribution of BOSS CMASS galaxies in the Final Data Release (2015, methodology): “While we use the BOSS DR12 stellar mass catalogues to estimate the SMF, Behroozi et al. (2013c) use the PRIMUS SMF (Moustakas et al. 2013).”
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: the importance of the hydrodynamics scheme (2015, result): “For comparison, the data points show the fractions inferred from SDSS data by Gilbank et al. (2010) and Moustakas et al. (2013).”
• The SAGA Survey. I. Satellite Galaxy Populations around Eight Milky Way Analogs (2017, methodology): “Therefore, it is guaranteed to produce a global galaxy stellar mass function for the stellar mass range between 109 and 1012M in the local Universe within the observational uncertainty.”
• Stellar masses of SDSS-III/BOSS galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 and constraints to galaxy formation models (2012, methodology): “The recent mass function calculated by Moustakas et al. (2013) using the PRIMUS survey also compares well with the two we plot here.”
• Introducing the Illustris Project: simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe (2014, methodology): “11 adopts this complimentary view and compares the predicted GSMF to current observations (Bernardi et al. 2013; Moustakas et al. 2013) based on data from SDSS and the PRism MUltiobject Survey (Coil et al. 2011; Cool et al. 2013).”