PHIBSS: MOLECULAR GAS CONTENT AND SCALING RELATIONS IN z ∼ 1–3 MASSIVE, MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR-FORMING GALAXIES

By L. Tacconi, R. Neri, R. Genzel, F. Combes, A. Bolatto, M. Cooper, S. Wuyts, Frédéric Bournaud, A. Burkert, J. Comerford and 14 more. 2012

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We present PHIBSS, the IRAM Plateau de Bure high-z blue sequence CO 3–2 survey of the molecular gas properties in massive, main-sequence star-forming galaxies (SFGs) near the cosmic star formation peak. PHIBSS provides 52 CO detections in two redshift slices at z ∼ 1.2 and 2.2, with log(M*(M☉)) ⩾ 10.4 and log(SFR(M☉/yr)) ⩾ 1.5. Including a correction for the incomplete coverage of the M*–SFR plane, and adopting a “Galactic” value for the CO–H2 conversion factor, we infer average gas fractions of ∼0.33 at z ∼ 1.2 and ∼0.47 at z ∼ 2.2. Gas fractions drop with stellar mass, in agreement with cosmological simulations including strong star formation feedback. Most of the z ∼ 1–3 SFGs are rotationally supported turbulent disks. The sizes of CO and UV/optical emission are comparable. The molecular-gas–star-formation relation for the z = 1–3 SFGs is near-linear, with a ∼0.7 Gyr gas depletion timescale; changes in depletion time are only a secondary effect. Since this timescale is much less than the Hubble time in all SFGs between z ∼ 0 and 2, fresh gas must be supplied with a fairly high duty cycle over several billion years. At given z and M*, gas fractions correlate strongly with the specific star formation rate (sSFR). The variation of sSFR between z ∼ 0 and 3 is mainly controlled by the fraction of baryonic mass that resides in cold gas.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/69e9ea3491f259a12dd2b1d3a2bde76b295269e3

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Citations in the corpus

• THE KMOS3D SURVEY: DESIGN, FIRST RESULTS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF GALAXY KINEMATICS FROM 0.7 ⩽ z ⩽ 2.7 (2014, methodology): “…out to z ∼ 2.5 (e.g., Förster Schreiber et al. 2006, 2009; Genzel et al. 2006, 2008; Shapiro et al. 2008; Epinat et al. 2009, 2012; Wuyts et al. 2011a) and the evolution of molecular gas mass fractions (e.g. Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013; Daddi et al. 2010; Saintonge et al. 2013; Genzel et al. 2014a).”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, background): “…clumpy distributions and elevated intrinsic local velocity dispersions, showing that these characteristics are not just a property of the ionized gas layer but of the entire ISM (e.g., Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013; Daddi et al. 2010; Swinbank et al. 2011; Genzel et al. 2013; Übler et al. 2018).”
• 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).”
• X-shooter reveals powerful outflows in z ∼ 1.5 X-ray selected obscured quasi-stellar objects (2014, background): “…objects in the “blow-out” phase, such as those presented in this work, than that measured in normal star forming galaxies at the same redshift (e.g. Tacconi et al. 2013) would constitute another way to assess the effect of AGN feedback in diminishing the cold gas mass in the hosts galaxies of…”
• The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey (2020, methodology): “Combined with SFRs derived from UV, FIR, [CII], and Hα, this will constrain SFR efficiencies and gas depletion times, thus providing insight into the emergence and growth of massive galaxies (Tacconi et al. 2013, 2018; Genzel et al. 2015; Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. 2017).”
• TRACING CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OVER THE EXTENT OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK WITH APOGEE RED CLUMP STARS (2014, background): “Rotationally-dominated disks observed at z ∼ 2 exhibit large random motions, and are geometrically thick relative to local galaxies in both ionized (e.g., Epinat et al. 2012; Genzel et al. 2008, ; and references therein) and molecular (e.g., Swinbank et al. 2012; Tacconi et al. 2013) gas studies.”
• The confinement of star-forming galaxies into a main sequence through episodes of gas compaction, depletion and replenishment (2015, methodology): “Tacconi et al. (2013) inferred an average depletion time tdep = 700 ± 200 Myr at z = 1 − 3, which may be slightly larger than our estimate of ∼ 480 Myr from the simulations.”
• 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).”
• OBSCURATION-DEPENDENT EVOLUTION OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2015, background): “At moderate redshifts, z ≈ 1 − 2, such galaxies are known to be gas-rich, with gas contents 3 to 10 times larger than local samples (Tacconi et al. 2013).”
• Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, background): “…et al. (2010) for star-forming galaxies (τH2 = 0.5 Gyr atz ∼ 2 andτH2 = 1.5 Gyr atz ∼ 0), by Daddi et al. (2010) for BzK galaxies (τH2 = 0.3-0.8 Gyr), by Tacconi et al. (2013) for main sequence galaxies atz=1-3 (τH2 ≃ 0.7 Gyr), but significantly larger than that of SMG and ULIRG (τH2 ≃ 0.1…”
• Molecular hydrogen abundances of galaxies in the EAGLE simulations (2015, background): “It has been established that the H2-to-stellar mass ratio anticorrelates with stellar mass and that such a relation is present from z = 0 to at least z ≈ 2.5 (e.g. Saintonge et al. 2011, 2013; Tacconi et al. 2013; Bothwell et al. 2014; DessaugesZavadsky et al. 2015; Santini et al. 2014).”
• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, background): “…the decrease in dust mass can be explained by the observed and inferred decrease in the gas fraction of galaxies (e.g., Tacconi et al. 2010; Narayanan et al. 2012; Tacconi et al. 2013; Saintonge et al. 2013; Santini et al. 2014; Béthermin et al. 2015; Popping et al. 2015; Scoville et al. 2016).”
• STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, background): “In the context of the FMR, high redshift galaxies, known to have much higher gas fractions and SFRs than most local star-forming galaxies (e.g., Erb et al. 2006c; Daddi et al. 2010; Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013), would also be expected to have correspondingly lower (O/H) at a given M∗.”
• KILOPARSEC-SCALE DUST DISKS IN HIGH-REDSHIFT LUMINOUS SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES (2016, background): “…traces the gas reservoirs required to fuel star formation, at sub-arcsecond resolution (&0.2′′; e.g., Tacconi et al. 2010; Engel et al. 2010; Bothwell et al. 2010; Hodge et al. 2012, 2013a; Tacconi et al. 2013; Genzel et al. 2013; Aravena et al. 2014; Bolatto et al. 2015; Miettinen et al. 2015).”
• PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, methodology): “51 detections of CO 3-2 emission in main-sequence SFGs in two redshift slices at z=1-1.5 and z=22.5 as part of the PHIBSS1 survey with the IRAM PdBI (now NOEMA; Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013).”
• VALIDATION OF THE EQUILIBRIUM MODEL FOR GALAXY EVOLUTION TO z ∼ 3 THROUGH MOLECULAR GAS AND DUST OBSERVATIONS OF LENSED STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “After correcting for sample incompleteness, Tacconi et al. (2013) measure a mean gas fraction of 47% at z ∼ 2.2.”