The rising star formation histories of distant galaxies and implications for gas accretion with time

By C. Papovich, S. Finkelstein, H. Ferguson, J. Lotz, Mauro Giavalisco Johns Hopkins University, Stsci, Noao, U. Massachusetts, Amherst. 2010

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Distant galaxies show correlations between their current star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses, implying that their star formation histories (SFHs) are highly similar. Moreover, observations show that the ultraviolet luminosities and stellar masses grow from z = 8 to 3, implying that the SFRs increase with time. We compare the cosmologically averaged evolution in galaxies at 3 4 are as fast and may even exceed the SFR: this is the 'gas accretion epoch'. At z < 4 the SFR overtakes the implied gas accretion rate, indicating a period where galaxies consume gas faster than it is acquired. At z ≲ 3, galaxies with this number density depart from these relations implying that star formation and gas accretion are slowed at later times.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5e3772801850cb0a1d714de27a7a55777507802

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. P. Hopkins
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. R. Somerville
5. R. Dav'e
6. M. Franx
7. D. Narayanan
8. C. Conroy

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. R. Bouwens
2. G. Illingworth
3. M. Franx
4. I. Labbé
5. J. Dunlop
6. P. V. van Dokkum
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8. C. Casey

In Instrumentation

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. M. Franx
3. L. Hernquist
4. P. Hopkins
5. C. Conroy
6. I. Labbé
7. R. Somerville
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• The stellar masses and specific star-formation rates of submillimetre galaxies (2011, background): “…indeed there is growing evidence in favour of rising SFHs in the wider population of galaxies studied at high redshift (e.g. Finlator et al. 2011; Papovich et al. 2011) The lack of either two-component models or rising SFHs in the analysis of H11 (or indeed Wardlow et al. 2011) can therefore…”
• Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “…based on an assumed relationship between the galaxy mass and accretion rate in the simulations; rather, this relationship is a direct result of the models. and Papovich et al. (2011) show that the star formation rates and stellar masses of most galaxies at 3 < z < 8 increase gradually with time.”
• The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, methodology): “…(Maraston et al. 2010) we opt for a multi-component parametrisation (Stark et al. 2014): a constant SFH is superimposed to a delayed τ model with SFR ∝ τ−2te−t/τ (see Simha et al. 2014) where the e-folding time τ is equal to 0.5 Gyr and t = 10−40 Myr (Papovich et al. 2001, 2011; Smit et al. 2014).”
• Herschel PEP/HerMES: the redshift evolution (0 ≤ z ≤ 4) of dust attenuation and of the total (UV+IR) star formation rate density (2013, methodology): “We stress, though, that by assuming an exponential rise above z > 4 with a value of the time constant τ = 420 Myrs as in Papovich et al.(2011) and the formation of galaxies at zform = 10 implies that the observed plateau at 4 < z < 5 must be temporary.”
• A survey of molecular gas in luminous sub-millimetre galaxies (2012, background): “Conversely, a gas fraction which rises with time represents a rapid accretion rate which swamps the consumption rate, leading to the accumulation of large gas reservoirs (thought to occur at z 4; Davé et al. 2011; Papovich et al. 2011).”
• Galaxy evolution in cosmological simulations with outflows ― I. Stellar masses and star formation rates (2011, background): “Furthermore, galaxies appear to be consuming their gas rapidly enough that fuel must be constantly replenished (Tacconi et al. 2010; Papovich et al. 2010), but merger-induced starbursts do not appears to be driving global star formation (Brinchmann et al. 2004; Noeske et al. 2007; Jogee et al.…”
• Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies (2013, background): “Recently, rising SFHs have become popular to explain the SEDs of high-redshift galaxies (Maraston et al. 2010, Papovich et al. 2011).”
• Lyα Emitting Galaxies as a Probe of Reionisation (2014, background): “• Finally, Finkelstein et al. (2012) speculate that it may be related to the ratio of the gas accretion rate onto galaxies and their star formation rate, which has been inferred observationally to increase by ∼ 40% from z = 6 to z = 7 (Papovich et al. 2011).”
• EVOLUTION OF GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS, MASS DENSITIES, AND MASS-TO-LIGHT RATIOS FROM z ∼ 7 TO z ∼ 4 (2010, background): “Different SFHs introduce systematic offsets to the mass determinations, largely independent of redshift (cf. Papovich et al. 2010).”