1.65 Micron (H Band) Surface Photometry of Galaxies. VI. The History of Star Formation in Normal Late-Type Galaxies

By A. Boselli, G. Gavazzi, J. Donas, M. Scodeggio. 2000

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have collected a large body of near-IR (H band), UV (2000 Å), and Hα measurements of late-type galaxies. These are used jointly with spectral evolutionary synthesis models to study the initial mass function (IMF) in the mass range m > 2 M⊙. For spirals (Sa–Sd), Magellanic irregulars (Im), and blue compact dwarfs, our determination is consistent with a Salpeter IMF with an upper mass cutoff Mup ∼ 80 M⊙. The history of star formation and the amount of total gas (per unit mass) of galaxies are found to depend primarily on their total masses (as traced by the H-band luminosities) and, only secondarily, on morphological type. The present star formation activity of massive spirals is up to 100 times smaller than that averaged over their lifetime, while in low-mass galaxies it is comparable to or higher than that at earlier epochs. Dwarf galaxies presently have larger gas reservoirs per unit mass than massive spirals. The efficiency in transforming gas into stars and the timescale for gas depletion (∼10 Gyr) are independent of the luminosity and morphological type. This evidence is consistent with the idea that galaxies are coeval systems, that they evolved as closed boxes, forming stars following a simple, universal star formation law whose characteristic timescale is small (τ ∼ 1 Gyr) in massive spirals and large (τ > 10 Gyr) in low-mass galaxies. A similar conclusion was drawn by Gavazzi & Scodeggio in 1996 to explain the color-magnitude relation of late-type galaxies. The consequences of this interpretation on the evolution of the star formation rate and the gas density per comoving volume of the universe with look-back time are discussed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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The dependence of star formation history and internal structure on stellar mass for 105 low‐redshift galaxies (2002, background): “This has led to suggestions that the ratio of present to past-averaged star formation rate may depend primarily on stellar mass and only secondarily on morphological type (Boselli et al 2001; Balogh et al 2001).”
Spectrophotometry of Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. I. The Star Formation History (2002, background): “We assume 0.8 and 0.6 mag extinction at H for galaxies earlier than Scd and for Sd-Im-BDC, respectively (consistently with Boselli et al. 2001).”
Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, background): “…defined as the ratio between the present star formation activity and the star formation activity averaged on the galaxy entire life, is defined by Boselli et al. (2001): b = S FR < S FR > = S FRt0(1 − R) M∗ , (4) with t0 the age of the galaxy, M∗ its stellar mass, and R (assumed to be 0.3) the…”
Metallicity and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Galaxy Pairs: Evidence for Tidally Induced Gas Flows (2005, background): “A mass-metallicity relation will arise if low mass galaxies have larger gas fractions than higher mass galaxies, as is observed in local galaxies (McGaugh & de Blok 1997; Bell & de Jong 2000; Boselli et al. 2001).”
A Search for Extended Ultraviolet Disk (XUV-Disk) Galaxies in the Local Universe (2007, background): “Two of the ways to support continued star formation of any type (besides closed box recycling, e.g. Boselli et al. 2001), are accretion from the IGM and gas deposition resulting from the debris of galaxy interaction processes.”
Molecular gas in normal late-type galaxies ? (2002, methodology): “This result does not change if the SFE is determined using the total gas mass (Boselli et al. 2001; Boissier et al. 2001), as expected being the HI to H 2 ratio constant (Fig.”
THE HOST GALAXIES OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. A MASS–METALLICITY RELATION FOR LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES (2010, background): “…gas fractions and more efficient stripping of heavy elements by galactic winds in lower-mass galaxies (McGaugh & de Blok 1997, Bell & de Jong 2000, Boselli et al. 2001, Garnett 2002, Tremonti et al. 2004), though this may not be the dominant effect driving the M-Z relation at higher redshifts…”
The star formation rate in disc galaxies: thresholds and dependence on gas amount (2003, methodology): “…flux to star formation rate is obtained assuming a power law IMF of slope -2.5 between 0.1 and 80 M⊙: SFR(M⊙/yr) = 0.86 10 −41 LHα(erg/s) As estimated in Boselli et al. (2001), the uncertainties in the IMF, extinction and [NII] contamination correction result in an overall uncertainty of the…”
The many manifestations of downsizing: hierarchical galaxy formation models confront observations (2009, background): “This trend reflects in SSFRs of nearby spiral galaxies which are higher for lower mass objects (Boselli et al. 2001).”
Environmental Effects on Late‐Type Galaxies in Nearby Clusters (2006, background): “…of mass and the birthrate parameter b, defined as the ratio between the present-day SFR and the SFR averaged over the entire life of the galaxy (Boselli et al. 2001), strongly depends on the total (H i plus H2) gas deficiency parameter: gasdeficient objects have a birthrate parameter that is…”
Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, methodology): “The present set of data is also used to estimate the gas depletion timescale or the star formation efficiency, defined as (Young et al. 1996; Boselli et al. 2001, 2002) τH2 = M(H2) S FR [yr] = 1 SFEH2 [yr−1] (5) when only the molecular gas content is considered, or equivalently τgas = M(gas) S FR…”
The GALEX Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies (2006, background): “…that the star formation history of galaxies depends strongly on their stellar or total mass. Lowmass galaxies show relatively flat star formation histories, while moremassive systems have shorter timescales of formation (e.g., Gavazzi et al. 1996, 2002;Gavazzi&Scodeggio 1996;Boselli et al. 2001).”
The dust scaling relations of the Herschel Reference Survey (2012, background): “3 can be seen as the result of the variation of SSFR with stellar mass (e.g., Boselli et al. 2001; Schiminovich et al. 2007).”
The star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Radial structures (2013, background): “This dependence of the galaxy properties with the stellar mass distribution points to morphology as a secondary parameter (Balogh et al. 2001; Boselli et al. 2001).”
UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe (2007, background): “The tightness of the “star forming” sequence (note that the formal error of the specific SFR is only 0.20 dex) represents an important indication that the galaxy’s mass regulates the overall star formation history(see also Gavazzi et al. 1996; Boselli et al. 2001).”
The Origin of Dwarf Ellipticals in the Virgo Cluster (2008, background): “…such that infall in low mass galaxies is shifted towards later time: this mimics the fact that massive galaxies are formed early on and that low mass galaxies are still forming at the current time, a well known fact (Gavazzi et al. 1996, 2002; Boselli et al. 2001) nowadays called “downsizing”.”