THE LESSER ROLE OF STARBURSTS IN STAR FORMATION AT z = 2

By G. Rodighiero, E. Daddi, I. Baronchelli, A. Cimatti, A. Renzini, H. Aussel, P. Popesso, D. Lutz, P. Andreani, S. Berta and 24 more. 2011

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Two main modes of star formation are know to control the growth of galaxies: a relatively steady one in disk-like galaxies, defining a tight star formation rate (SFR)–stellar mass sequence, and a starburst mode in outliers to such a sequence which is generally interpreted as driven by merging. Such starburst galaxies are rare but have much higher SFRs, and it is of interest to establish the relative importance of these two modes. PACS/Herschel observations over the whole COSMOS and GOODS-South fields, in conjunction with previous optical/near-IR data, have allowed us to accurately quantify for the first time the relative contribution of the two modes to the global SFR density in the redshift interval 1.5 < z < 2.5, i.e., at the cosmic peak of the star formation activity. The logarithmic distributions of galaxy SFRs at fixed stellar mass are well described by Gaussians, with starburst galaxies representing only a relatively minor deviation that becomes apparent for SFRs more than four times higher than on the main sequence. Such starburst galaxies represent only 2% of mass-selected star-forming galaxies and account for only 10% of the cosmic SFR density at z ∼ 2. Only when limited to SFR > 1000 M☉ yr−1, off-sequence sources significantly contribute to the SFR density (46% ± 20%). We conclude that merger-driven starbursts play a relatively minor role in the formation of stars in galaxies, whereas they may represent a critical phase toward the quenching of star formation and morphological transformation in galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72365b62733d733df7bc893faca8bce0a8580e20

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Citations in the corpus

The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, background): “The latter, being very rare, despite their high level of SFR, seem to contribute modestly to the cosmic star formation history (Rodighiero et al. 2011; Sargent et al. 2012; Lamastra et al. 2013).”
UNLEASHING POSITIVE FEEDBACK: LINKING THE RATES OF STAR FORMATION, SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE ACCRETION, AND OUTFLOWS IN DISTANT GALAXIES (2013, background): “%) of the SFR main sequence if the starburst timescale is as short as ∼20 Myr rather than the customarily adopted ∼100 Myr (Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
A TURNOVER IN THE GALAXY MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR FORMATION AT M* ∼ 1010 M☉ FOR REDSHIFTS z < 1.3 (2015, background): “…galaxies are powered by similar quasi-steady processes, with only a small fraction of galaxies undergoing more chaotic processes such as major merger events that might be expected to produce strong bursts of star formation (e.g. Elbaz et al. 2011; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Sargent et al. 2012).”
Evolution of the dust emission of massive galaxies up to z=4 and constraints on their dominant mode of star formation (2014, methodology): “We expect that this contamination is negligible, since the contribution of all starbursts to the infrared luminosity density is lower than 15% (Rodighiero et al. 2011; Sargent et al. 2012).”
THE EVOLVING INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 AS PROBED BY THEIR INFRARED SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS (2012, methodology): “…have recently turned out to be more likely a mixed ensemble of objects, with a significant fraction of them exhibiting star formation rates and star for- Dust and Gas in Star Forming Galaxies to z = 2 15 mation efficiencies typical of MS galaxies (Ivison et al. 2011, Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
THE FMOS-COSMOS SURVEY OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT z ∼ 1.6. I. Hα-BASED STAR FORMATION RATES AND DUST EXTINCTION (2013, background): “The “bolometric” infrared luminosity (8−1000µm) is another very powerful SFR indicator, but current Herschel data are not deep enough to fully map the MS, instead identifying and characterizing outlyingstarburst galaxies (Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, background): “This follows from the fact that approximately 95% of the SF galaxies at each epoch lie on the MS with SFRs dispersed only a factor 2 above or below the MS (e.g. Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
THE CONTRIBUTION OF STARBURSTS AND NORMAL GALAXIES TO INFRARED LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS AT z < 2 (2012, methodology): “We emphasize that our formalism is “anchored” to z∼ 2 where the double-Gaussian decomposition is directly constrained by the data of Rodighiero et al. (2011).”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, result): “Recent ALMA observations of X-ray selected AGN in the GOODS field (Mullaney et al. 2015) confirmed these earlier results, showing that the bulk of the AGN population lie below the galaxy main sequence (see Daddi et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011, and refs. therein).”
An ALMA survey of sub-millimetre Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: the far-infrared properties of SMGs (2013, background): “It has also been proposed that lower luminosity SMGs overlap with the “main sequence”, leading to claims of an apparent dichotomy within this population: i.e. between a true “starburst” population and slightly less active galaxies, potentially driven by secular processes (Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
The stellar masses and specific star-formation rates of submillimetre galaxies (2011, result): “…for the nine different determinations of SMG masses considered in this paper, we plot SFR versus M∗ for all the individual SMGs in the sample, and compare the results with the location of the so-called ‘main-sequence’ of star-forming galaxies at z ≃ 2 (Daddi et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
GOODS-ALMA: 1.1 mm galaxy survey (2018, background): “…Carniani et al. 2015), the analysis of populations of dust-poor high-z galaxies (Fujimoto et al. 2016) or Main Sequence (MS; Noeske et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Elbaz et al. 2011) galaxies (e.g. Papovich et al. 2016; Dunlop et al. 2017; Schreiber et al. 2017), and also demonstrates…”
Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, background): “Several studies have put constraints on the MS at different redshifts (e.g., Peng et al. 2010; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Heinis et al. 2014).”
THE IMPACT OF INTERACTIONS, BARS, BULGES, AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI ON STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY IN LOCAL MASSIVE GALAXIES (2012, background): “However, recent observations downplay the importance of violent events such as merger-induced starbursts in the global star formation budget of the universe, even at z ∼ 2 (Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, result): “Therefore, we leave a detailed comparison to the numerous observations in this area (e.g. Noeske et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Wuyts et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Speagle et al. 2014; Renzini & Peng 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015) to future work, and use the star…”
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, background): “…7095, Institut dAstrophysique de Paris, F75014, Paris, France 16 ESO, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany z ∼ 2 approximately 2% of the star forming galaxies have SFRs more than 4 times higher than the MS, contributing ∼ 10% of the total star formation (Rodighiero et al. 2011).”
(Star)bursts of FIRE: observational signatures of bursty star formation in galaxies (2015, background): “This relation can be used to define starbursts galaxies as outliers well above this relation (Rodighiero et al. 2011; Sargent et al. 2012); conversely, galaxies that are well below this relation are referred to as quenched.”