A TURNOVER IN THE GALAXY MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR FORMATION AT M* ∼ 1010 M☉ FOR REDSHIFTS z < 1.3

By N. Lee, D. Sanders, Caitlin M. Casey, S. Toft, N. Scoville, C. Hung, É. Le Floc'h, O. Ilbert, H. Zahid, H. Aussel and 7 more. 2015

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The relationship between galaxy star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses (M*) is reexamined using a mass-selected sample of ∼62,000 star-forming galaxies at z ⩽ 1.3 in the COSMOS 2 deg2 field. Using new far-infrared photometry from Herschel-PACS and SPIRE and Spitzer-MIPS 24 μm, along with derived infrared luminosities from the NRK method based on galaxies' locations in the restframe color–color diagram (NUV − r) versus (r − K), we are able to more accurately determine total SFRs for our complete sample. At all redshifts, the relationship between median SFR and M* follows a power law at low stellar masses, and flattens to nearly constant SFR at high stellar masses. We describe a new parameterization that provides the best fit to the main sequence and characterizes the low mass power-law slope, turnover mass, and overall scaling. The turnover in the main sequence occurs at a characteristic mass of about M0 ∼ 1010 M☉ at all redshifts. The low mass power-law slope ranges from 0.9–1.3 and the overall scaling rises in SFR as a function of (1 + z)4.12 ± 0.10. A broken power-law fit below and above the turnover mass gives relationships of below the turnover mass and above the turnover mass. Galaxies more massive than M* ≳ 1010 M☉ have a much lower average specific star formation rate (sSFR) than would be expected by simply extrapolating the traditional linear fit to the main sequence found for less massive galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/680edbe1f35ef3a5404079d547b010767d8e066d

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Citations in the corpus

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, methodology): “The SFRs assume a Chabrier stellar initial mass function (IMF); they are derived from the rest frame UV continuum and infrared using Herschel PACS and SPIRE data as detailed in Ilbert et al. (2013) and in Lee et al. (2015) .”
Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, methodology): “Here, we use the shape of the MS from Lee et al. (2015) at z = 1.2 for the stellar mass dependence of the MS, SFRMS = 10 (1.72 − log(1 + (10(logM∗−10.31))−1.07)) and normalize to unity at log M∗ = 10.5 M , ζMS(M∗)≡ SFRMS(M∗)/SFRMS(logM∗ = 10.5) .”
THE SFR–M* RELATION AND EMPIRICAL STAR FORMATION HISTORIES FROM ZFOURGE AT 0.5 < z < 4 (2015, methodology): “1010.2 M⊙), but that this trend flattens at higher masses (see also Whitaker et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015).”
The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, background): “…normalization with redshift (e.g., Santini et al. 2009; Speagle et al. 2014; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015; Salmon et al. 2015; Lee et al. 2015; Tomczak et al. 2016), the slope is more uncertain and highly dependent on the details of the analysis, on the SFR tracer adopted and…”
(Star)bursts of FIRE: observational signatures of bursty star formation in galaxies (2015, background): “…observations indicate the presence of a correlation between the SFRs and stellar masses, M∗, of star-forming galaxies at fixed redshift, and the normalisation of this relation increases with increasing redshift (Brinchmann et al. 2004; Elbaz et al. 2011; Rodighiero et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2015).”
THE COSMOS2015 CATALOG: EXPLORING THE 1 < z < 6 UNIVERSE WITH HALF A MILLION GALAXIES (2016, methodology): “Given the uncertainties on the SFR based on template fitting (Ilbert et al. 2015; Lee et al. 2015) we do not include the SFRs estimated from template fitting in our distributed catalogs.”