Cosmic evolution of the atomic and molecular gas contents of galaxies

By C. Lagos, C. Baugh, C. Lacey, A. Benson, H. Kim, Chris Power Icc, Durham, Caltech, Melbourne., W. University. 2011

208 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the evolution of the cold gas content of galaxies by splitting the interstellar medium into its atomic and molecular hydrogen components, using the galaxy formation model galform in the Λ cold dark matter framework. We calculate the molecular-to-atomic hydrogen mass ratio, H_(2)/H i, in each galaxy using two different approaches, the pressure-based empirical relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky and the theoretical model of Krumholz, McKeee & Tumlinson, and apply them to consistently calculate the star formation rates of galaxies. We find that the model based on the Blitz & Rosolowsky law predicts an H i mass function, ^(12)CO (1–0) luminosity function, correlations between H_(2)/H i and stellar and cold gas mass, and infrared–^(12)CO molecule luminosity relation in good agreement with local and high-redshift observations. The H i mass function evolves weakly with redshift, with the number density of high-mass galaxies decreasing with increasing redshift. In the case of the H_2 mass function, the number density of massive galaxies increases strongly from z= 0 to 2, followed by weak evolution up to z= 4. We also find that H_(2)/H i of galaxies is strongly dependent on stellar and cold gas mass, and also on redshift. The slopes of the correlations between H_(2)/H i and stellar and cold gas mass hardly evolve, but the normalization increases by up to two orders of magnitude from z= 0 to 8. The strong evolution in the H_2 mass function and H_(2)/H i is primarily due to the evolution in the sizes of galaxies and, secondarily, in the gas fractions. The predicted cosmic density evolution of H i agrees with the observed evolution inferred from damped Lyα systems, and is always dominated by the H i content of low- and intermediate-mass haloes. We find that previous theoretical studies have largely overestimated the redshift evolution of the global H_(2)/H i due to limited resolution. We predict a maximum of ρH_2/ρH i ≈ 1.2 at z≈ 3.5.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f8c7e90fbf49f7d487cd86178f38368500f7d0a

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Citations in the corpus

• On the impact of empirical and theoretical star formation laws on galaxy formation (2010, methodology): “…used in the galaxy formation model GALFORM and implement new, parameter-free SF laws with the aim of isolating observations that could be used to distinguish between SF models (see Lagos et al. 2011, for the predictions of these models for the atomic and molecular hydrogen content of galaxies).”
• Evolution of the atomic and molecular gas content of galaxies (2013, background): “Using their preferred model, Lagos et al. (2011a) find an evolution in the Hi and H2 mass functions, gas fractions and H2 density of the universe very similar to our results.”
• Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, background): “…or hydrodynamical simulations for partitioning the cold gas into the neutral and molecular phases (Fu et al. 2010; Altay et al. 2011; Lagos et al. 2011; Cen 2012), these prescriptions are not well calibrated against data at high redshift, and do not agree among themselves in various…”
• Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, background): “…for cosmological studies based on semi-analytic models of galaxy evolution, now able to tracethe evolution of the different gas phases (Gnedin et al. 2009; Dutton 2009; Dutton & van den Bosch 2009; Fu et al. 2010; Power et al. 2010; Cook et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011a,b; Kauffmann et al. 2012).”
• xCOLD GASS: The Complete IRAM 30 m Legacy Survey of Molecular Gas for Galaxy Evolution Studies (2017, background): “…(e.g. Combes et al. 2013; Troncoso et al. 2014; Seko et al. 2016; Genzel et al. 2015; Tacconi et al. 2017), and provides powerful constraints for theoretical models and numerical simulations (e.g. Lagos et al. 2011; Genel et al. 2014; Popping et al. 2015; Lagos et al. 2015; Davé et al. 2017).”
• Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses (2014, methodology): “Detailed semi-analytic models for atomic to molecular gas conversion have been developed by Fu et al. (2012, 2013) and Lagos et al. (2011) and will be included in future versions of the Munich model.”
• Molecular hydrogen abundances of galaxies in the EAGLE simulations (2015, methodology): “This opportunity has been exploited using semi-analytic models which, when coupled with a star formation law that relates the SFR directly to the content of H2, reproduce many of the above correlations (e.g. Fu et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011b,a, 2014b Popping et al. 2014).”
• A unified multiwavelength model of galaxy formation (2015, methodology): “These dependencies of gas contents on mass and redshift are analysed in more detail in Lagos et al. (2011a, 2014a).”
• An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field: physical properties of 707 sub-millimetre galaxies (2019, methodology): “…rapid decrease in the number density of SMGs at z 1.5–2 is explained by the decline in the molecular gas fraction in the haloes (Geach et al. 2011; Lagos et al. 2011; Tacconi et al. 2018), as well as the decrease in the number of dark matter haloes that transit above the mass threshold as the…”
• Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “This general trend is in good agreement with cosmological galaxy formation simulations (e.g. Bouché et al., 2010; Dutton et al., 2010; Lagos et al., 2011; Davé et al., 2012).”
• A survey of molecular gas in luminous sub-millimetre galaxies (2012, background): “8 the predictions from the semi-analytic galaxy formation model GALFORM (Lagos et al. 2011; see also Swinbank et al. 2008).”
• Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters (2016, background): “The current implementation was developed by Lagos et al. (2011), further details can be found in that paper.”
• PHIBSS: MOLECULAR GAS CONTENT AND SCALING RELATIONS IN z ∼ 1–3 MASSIVE, MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2012, background): “Therefore the HI/H2 ratio is expected to decrease strongly at high-z, as the mean H2 column densities and ISM pressure are at least an order of magnitude greater than at low-z (e.g. Obreschkow & Rawlings 2009, Lagos et al. 2011, Fu et al. 2012).”
• The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies (2013, background): “…be confirmed by the results of Bauermeister et al. (2010), who observe little evolution in the cosmic H i density, while the molecular component is expected to positively evolve out to the peak of cosmic star formation (z ∼ 2–3, Obreschkow & Rawlings 2009; Lagos et al. 2011; Popping et al. 2013).”
• The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey - VIII. Final data release. The effect of group environment on the gas content of massive galaxies (2013, background): “…et al. 2012), are necessary to explain the variety of systems observed today in the local Universe, and to provide important constraints to theoretical models and simulations of galaxy formation (e.g. Fu et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011; Davé, Finlator & Oppenheimer 2011; Kauffmann et al. 2012).”
• Lightcone mock catalogues from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation – I. Construction and application to the BzK colour selection (2012, background): “…merger history of a galaxy and makes predictions for many galaxy properties including luminosities over a substantial wavelength range extending from the far-UV through to the submillimetre (Baugh et al. 2005; Lacey et al. 2008, 2010; Lagos et al. 2011a; Fanidakis et al. 2011; Lagos et al. 2012).”
• PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, background): “…formation rate, galaxy size/internal structure, gas motions and environmental parameters (e.g. Daddi et al. 2010a, b, Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013, Genzel et al. 2010, 2015, Bouché et al. 2010, Lilly et al. 2013, Davé et al. 2011, 1012, Lagos et al. 2011, 2015a,b, Fu et al. 2012, Popping et al. 2015).”
• Cool Gas in High-Redshift Galaxies (2013, methodology): “Lagos et al. (2011) used a similar methodology, but a different galaxy formation model to separate the atomic and molecular gas phases of the interstellar medium.”
• Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, methodology): “The evolution of the ISM mass density shown in Figure 14-Left is similar in magnitude to the theoretical predictions based on semi-analytic models by Obreschkow et al. (2009); Lagos et al. (2011); Sargent et al. (2013) (see Figure 12 in Carilli & Walter (2013)).”