The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields

By P. Santini, A. Fontana, M. Castellano, M. Criscienzo, E. Merlin, R. Amorín, F. Cullen, E. Daddi, Mark Dickinson, J. Dunlop and 6 more. 2017

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the relation between star formation rate (SFR) and stellar mass (M), i.e., the main sequence (MS) relation of star-forming galaxies, at in the first four Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Frontier Fields, on the basis of rest-frame UV observations. Gravitational lensing combined with deep HST observations allows us to extend the analysis of the MS down to at and at higher redshifts, a factor of ∼10 below most previous results. We perform an accurate simulation to take into account the effect of observational uncertainties and correct for the Eddington bias. This step allows us to reliably measure the MS and in particular its slope. While the normalization increases with redshift, we fit an unevolving and approximately linear slope. We nicely extend to lower masses the results of brighter surveys. Thanks to the large dynamic range in mass and by making use of the simulation, we analyzed any possible mass dependence of the dispersion around the MS. We find tentative evidence that the scatter decreases with increasing mass, suggesting a larger variety of star formation histories in low-mass galaxies. This trend agrees with theoretical predictions and is explained as either a consequence of the smaller number of progenitors of low-mass galaxies in a hierarchical scenario and/or of the efficient but intermittent stellar feedback processes in low-mass halos. Finally, we observe an increase in the SFR per unit stellar mass with redshift milder than predicted by theoretical models, implying a still incomplete understanding of the processes responsible for galaxy growth.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8787379d57ce559e4f0ad73daf393f6bd1a1729e

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Citations in the corpus

JWST Census for the Mass–Metallicity Star Formation Relations at z = 4–10 with Self-consistent Flux Calibration and Proper Metallicity Calibrators (2023, result): “This is overall consistent with the star formation main sequence of galaxies at z = 4 – 7, where an sSFR of 10 − 8.5 – 10 − 7.5 yr − 1 is typically suggested ( e.g., Stark et al. 2013; de Barros et al. 2014; Santini et al. 2017; Popesso et al. 2023 ) .”
Big Three Dragons: A z = 7.15 Lyman-break galaxy detected in [O iii] 88 μm, [C ii] 158 μm, and dust continuum with ALMA (2018, background): “The sSFR of 260 +119 −57 Gyr −1 is larger than those for galaxies on the star formation main sequence at z ≈ 6−7 (e.g., Stark et al. 2013; Speagle et al. 2014; Santini et al. 2017).”
The star formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics (2018, background): “Additionally, observations show that the value of the normalization increases at increasing redshift, with a redshift-independent slope measured in the range (0.4, 1) and the normalization measured to be in the range of (−1.0, 0.25) M yr−1 at ∼ 109M and z = 0 − 2, likely depending on sample selectio”