Cosmic Star Formation History and Its Dependence on Galaxy Stellar Mass

By S. Juneau, Karl Glazebrook, D. Crampton, P. McCarthy, S. Savaglio, R. Abraham, R. Carlberg, Hsiao-Wen Chen, D. Le Borgne, R. Marzke and 4 more. 2004

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We examine the cosmic star formation rate (SFR) and its dependence on galaxy stellar mass over the redshift range 0.8 < z < 2 using data from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS). The SFR in the most massive galaxies (M* > 1010.8 M☉) was 6 times higher at z = 2 than it is today. It drops steeply from z = 2, reaching the present-day value at z ~ 1. In contrast, the SFR density of intermediate-mass galaxies (1010.2 M☉ ≤ M* < 1010.8 M☉) declines more slowly and may peak or plateau at z ~ 1.5. We use the characteristic growth time tSFR ≡ ρ/ρSFR to provide evidence of an associated transition in massive galaxies from a burst to a quiescent star formation mode at z ~ 2. Intermediate-mass systems transit from burst to quiescent mode at z ~ 1, while the lowest mass objects undergo bursts throughout our redshift range. Our results show unambiguously that the formation era for galaxies was extended and proceeded from high- to low-mass systems. The most massive galaxies formed most of their stars in the first ~3 Gyr of cosmic history. Intermediate-mass objects continued to form their dominant stellar mass for an additional ~2 Gyr, while the lowest mass systems have been forming over the whole cosmic epoch spanned by the GDDS. This view of galaxy formation clearly supports "downsizing" in the SFR where the most massive galaxies form first and galaxy formation proceeds from larger to smaller mass scales.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c48fe58c44a75ec5cf81221b5ef5de25d01fe2ba

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Citations in the corpus

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• THE RISE AND FALL OF PASSIVE DISK GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ALONG THE RED SEQUENCE REVEALED BY COSMOS (2009, background): “…luminosity functions to trace the evolution since z ∼ 2 of the two populations as partitioned by the amount of star formation or the rest-frame color (Juneau et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Borch et al. 2006; Willmer et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007; Ilbert et al. 2010; Mobasher et al. 2009) and as…”
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• Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z = 1.1: Staged Galaxy Formation and a Model of Mass-dependent Gas Exhaustion (2007, background): “High SSFR have been interpreted as episodes of SFR above the past average level (b > 1), based on the assumption that all galaxies had a relatively high zf (see § 3) (e.g., Bell et al. 2005, Juneau et al. 2005, Feulner et al. 2005).”
• A POPULATION OF MASSIVE, LUMINOUS GALAXIES HOSTING HEAVILY DUST-OBSCURED GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF GRBs AS TRACERS OF COSMIC STAR FORMATION (2013, background): “…et al. 2007; Santini et al. 2009), some other studies (in particular, optically selected samples) do suggest a larger role for star formation at lower masses: for example, Juneau et al. (2005) and Mobasher et al. (2009) suggest that the median mass is somewhere near or below 1010 M⊙ at z ≈ 1–2.”
• The Star Formation History of the Universe as Revealed by Deep Radio Observations (2008, background): “Many authors have observed the evolution of the distribution of star formation moving high mass galaxies at high redshift to lower mass galaxies at lower redshifts (e.g. Cowie et al. 1996; Panter et al. 2004; Juneau et al. 2005; Panter et al. 2007; Noeske et al. 2007).”
• The Herschel* PEP/HerMES luminosity function - I. Probing the evolution of PACS selected Galaxies to z ≃ 4 (2013, background): “…since only few studies have tried to reconstruct the evolution of the SF history of massive objects from optical/near-IR or mid-IR surveys (Juneau et al. 2005; Pérez-González et al. 2005; Santini et al. 2009; Fontanot et al. 2012) but none from far-IR selected surveys (providing a more…”
• THE GREATER IMPACT OF MERGERS ON THE GROWTH OF MASSIVE GALAXIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR MASS ASSEMBLY AND EVOLUTION SINCE z ≃ 1 (2009, background): “…early completion of star formation in the most massive galaxies, followed by continued activity in lower-mass systems—a phenomenon now termed “downsizing” (e.g., Juneau et al. 2005; Treu et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Borch et al. 2006; Cimatti et al. 2006; Bell et al. 2007; Cowie & Barger 2008).”
• The Stellar Mass Assembly of Galaxies from z = 0 to z = 4: Analysis of a Sample Selected in the Rest-Frame Near-Infrared with Spitzer (2007, background): “…scenario (Cowie et al. 1996), where the most massive galaxies are formed first and the star formation continues in less massive systems until more recent epochs (Heavens et al. 2004; Juneau et al. 2005; Bauer et al. 2005; Pérez-González et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2006; Tresse et al. 2007).”
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• The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation (2005, methodology): “Utilizing near-IR data, Feulner (2005) and Juneau et al. (2005) reported that the epoch of major star formation took place at higher redshifts for more massive galaxies, and star formation is more extended in time for less massive galaxies.”
• 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.”
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• The Dependence of Star Formation on Galaxy Stellar Mass (2007, background): “Juneau et al. 2005; Bauer et al. 2005; Feulner et al. 2005).”
• EMU: Evolutionary Map of the Universe (2011, background): “There is now evidence that star formation depends both on galaxy stellar mass (Feulner et al. 2005; Juneau et al. 2005; Papovich et al. 2006; Mobasher et al. 2009, see Figure.”