The Mass Assembly History of Field Galaxies: Detection of an Evolving Mass Limit for Star-Forming Galaxies

By K. Bundy, Richard S. Ellis, Christopher J. Conselice, James E. Taylor, M. C. Cooper, C. Willmer, B. Weiner, A. Coil, K. Noeske, P. Eisenhardt. 2005

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We characterize the mass-dependent evolution of more than 8000 galaxies using spectroscopic redshifts from the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey in the range 0.4 < z < 1.4 and stellar masses calculated from K-band photometry obtained at Palomar Observatory. This sample spans more than 1.5 deg2 in four independent fields. Using rest-frame U - B color and [O II] equivalent widths, we distinguish star-forming from passive populations in order to explore the nature of ``downsizing''—a pattern in which the sites of active star formation shift from high-mass galaxies at early times to lower mass systems at later epochs. We identify a mass limit, MQ, above which star formation appears to be quenched and show that the physical mechanisms responsible for downsizing can thus be empirically quantified by charting the evolution in this threshold mass. We find that MQ decreases with time by a factor of ~3 across our redshift range according to MQ ∝ (1 + z)3.5. To further constrain possible quenching mechanisms, we investigate how downsizing depends on local galaxy environment using the projected third-nearest-neighbor statistic Dp,3. For the majority of galaxies near the median density, there is no significant correlation between downsizing and environment. However, a trend is observed in the comparison between environments that are more than 3 times overdense or underdense relative to the median. Here, downsizing appears accelerated in overdense regions that host higher numbers of massive, early-type galaxies as compared to the underdense regions. Our results significantly constrain recent suggestions for the origin of downsizing and indicate that the process for quenching star formation must, primarily, be internally driven.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9172addfad3036e676a64763224f56a020022745

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THE STAR FORMATION HISTORY OF MASS-SELECTED GALAXIES IN THE COSMOS FIELD (2010, background): “Finally, it is also worth noting that, towards lower redshifts, our slope βSFG agrees well with the measurements by Noeske et al. (2007b) which are based on SFRs from emission lines, UV as well as 24 µm imaging for a K-band selected sample of the DEEP2 spectroscopic survey.”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, background): “As the galaxy population evolves, massive galaxies tend to pile up around M∗ ∼ 3× 1010M due to the increasing number of massive quenched galaxies at lower redshifts (see e.g., Bundy et al. 2006; Faber et al. 2007; Peng et al. 2010; Pozzetti et al. 2010; Muzzin et al. 2013).”
A WEAK LENSING STUDY OF X-RAY GROUPS IN THE COSMOS SURVEY: FORM AND EVOLUTION OF THE MASS–LUMINOSITY RELATION (2009, methodology): “Stellar Mass Estimates Stellar masses are used to identify the Most Massive Central Galaxy (MMCG) (see §4.4 for more details) and are estimated using the Bayesian code described in Bundy (2006a) and Bundy et al. (2006b).”
THE INITIAL MASS FUNCTION OF EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2010, unknown): “…Astronomy, University of Utah, 115 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA (bolton@physics.utah.edu) manner are often used to construct stellar mass functions and to study the demographics of galaxies over cosmic time (e.g., Brinchmann & Ellis 2000; Fontana et al. 2006; Bundy et al. 2006).”
Galaxy Masses: A Review (2013, background): “…of stellar and dynamical mass estimates (e.g. de Jong & Bell 2007; Taylor et al. 2010), mass function determinations (e.g. stellar mass functions: Bundy et al. 2006; Pozzetti et al. 2010; Maraston et al. 2012) (e.g. dynamical mass functions: Trujillo-Gomez et al. 2011; Papastergis et al. 2011,…”
Metallicities and Physical Conditions in Star-forming Galaxies at z ~ 1.0-1.5 (2008, background): “These conditions may be quite common during the epoch atz≥ 1 when at least 50% of the local stellar mass density was formed (Bundy et al. 2006; Drory et al. 2005).”
Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, background): “…with luminosity 17:6 < i0 < 20:0 (i.e., the same range in stellar luminosity as our sample, excluding the point source) and in the redshift range 0:26 < z < 0:46 (morphologies are photometric, and spectroscopic redshifts are from Bundy et al. 2006) and performed the same visual classification.”
Strong size evolution of the most massive galaxies since z~2 (2007, methodology): “We use the Palomar Observatory Wide-field Infrared (POWIR)/DEEP2 survey (Bundy et al. 2006; Conselice et al. 2007a,b; Davis et al. 2003) to define a sample of 831 galaxies with masses larger than 1011h70−2M⊙ located over∼710 arcmin 2 in the Extended Groth Strip (EGS).”
GMASS ultradeep spectroscopy of galaxies at $z$ ~ 2 - II. Superdense passive galaxies: how did they form and evolve? (2008, background): “…also be consistent with the recent findings of a very weak evolution of the stellar or dynamical mass functions of luminous and massive (> 1011 M⊙) ETGs atz ≤0.7–0.8 (e.g. Bundy et al. 2007, Bundy et al. 2006, Borch et al. 2006, Cimatti et al. 2006, Scarlata et al. 2006, Pozzetti et al. 2007).”
THE MAJOR AND MINOR GALAXY MERGER RATES AT z < 1.5 (2011, methodology): “…green asterisks); Bottom: ngal(z) for galaxies selected with Mstar > 1010M⊙ from Bell et al. 2003 (2MASS, black square), Bundy et al. 2005 (GOODS, black filled circles), Ilbert et al. 2009 (black diamonds), Pozzetti et al. 2007 (VVDS, open circles), and Bundy et al 2006 (DEEP2, black asterisks).”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “For about half the galaxies in the sample, we have Ks−band photometry from the Wide Field Infrared Camera on the 5 m Hale Telescope (Bundy et al. 2006).”
THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY (2012, background): “…that the number of red galaxies has at least doubled sincez ∼ 1 while the number of blue galaxies has remained relatively constant (Bell et al. 2004b; Bundy et al. 2006; Faber et al. 2007; Arnouts et al. 2007; Brown et al. 2007; Ilbert et al. 2010; Domínguez et al. 2011; Gonçalves et al. 2012).”
Resolved Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Star Formation in Disks at High Redshift (2007, background): “…2006; Clemens et al. 2006; Sheth et al. 2006) and for more massive galaxies (e.g., van derWel et al. 2004; Treu et al. 2005; Feulner et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Kajisawa & Yamada 2006; Franceschini et al. 2006), but even most low-mass ellipticals appear to have assembled before z 0:8…”
THE SPITZER DEEP, WIDE-FIELD SURVEY (2009, background): “However, observations show that the most massive galaxies grow slowly at late times compared to lower-mass galaxies (e.g., Bundy et al. 2006), a phenomenon commonly referred to as “downsizing.””
The Evolving Luminosity Function of Red Galaxies (2006, background): “However, unlike some recent studies (e.g., Bundy et al. 2006; Borch et al. 2006; Cimatti et al. 2006), we do see evidence for the ongoing assembly of the most massive red galaxies, albeit at a rate that produces little growth of 4L red galaxy stellar masses at z < 1.”
Bimodal gas accretion in the Horizon–MareNostrum galaxy formation simulation (2008, background): “Finally, it was recently observed that the apparent bimodality mass scale might increase with redshift (Juneau et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2007), an intriguing behaviour that has yet to be checked against models.”
COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATIONS OF ACTIVE AND NON-ACTIVE GALAXIES IN THE CHANDRA DEEP FIELDS: HIGH-REDSHIFT CONSTRAINTS AND STELLAR-MASS SELECTION EFFECTS (2010, methodology): “We refer readers to other works for detailed discussion of the complexity and uncertainty of stellar-mass estimates (e.g., Bundy et al. 2006; Gallazzi & Bell 2009; Muzzin et al. 2009; Zibetti, Charlot, & Rix 2009).”
On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters (2012, background): “Since giant ellipticals assembled at very high redshift (e.g. Cimatti et al. 2004; Daddi et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Naab et al. 2007) and at correspondingly high surface densities, the CFE must have been high as well.”
A HIGHLY CONSISTENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVOLUTION OF THE STAR-FORMING “MAIN SEQUENCE” FROM z ∼ 0–6 (2014, methodology): “Masses were obtained from SED fits to optical/NIR photometry by Bundy et al. (2006) and are detailed in Table 3.”
Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses (2014, methodology): “This behaviour has been noted previously (e.g. Bundy et al. 2006; Bell et al. 2007; Ilbert et al. 2010) and in particular by Peng et al. (2010) who used it as the basis of a simple, toy model for galaxy formation.”