The Herschel view of the dominant mode of galaxy growth from z = 4 to the present day

By C. Schreiber, M. Pannella, D. Elbaz, M. B'ethermin, H. Inami, Mark Dickinson, B. Magnelli, Tao Wang, H. Aussel, E. Daddi and 13 more. 2014

515 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analysis of the deepest Herschel images in four major extragalactic fields GOODS–North, GOODS–South, UDS, and COSMOS obtained within the GOODS–Herschel and CANDELS–Herschel key programs. The star formation picture provided by a total of 10 497 individual far-infrared detections is supplemented by the stacking analysis of a mass complete sample of 62 361 star-forming galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) H band-selected catalogs of the CANDELS survey and from two deep ground-based Ks band-selected catalogs in the GOODS–North and the COSMOS-wide field to obtain one of the most accurate and unbiased understanding to date of the stellar mass growth over the cosmic history. We show, for the first time, that stacking also provides a powerful tool to determine the dispersion of a physical correlation and describe our method called “scatter stacking”, which may be easily generalized to other experiments. The combination of direct UV and far-infrared UV-reprocessed light provides a complete census on the star formation rates (SFRs), allowing us to demonstrate that galaxies at z = 4 to 0 of all stellar masses (M∗) follow a universal scaling law, the so-called main sequence of star-forming galaxies. We find a universal close-to-linear slope of the log 10(SFR)–log 10(M∗) relation, with evidence for a flattening of the main sequence at high masses (log 10(M∗/M⊙) > 10.5) that becomesless prominent with increasing redshift and almost vanishes by z ≃ 2. This flattening may be due to the parallel stellar growth of quiescent bulges in star-forming galaxies, which mostly happens over the same redshift range. Within the main sequence, we measure a nonvarying SFR dispersion of 0.3 dex: at a fixed redshift and stellar mass, about 68% of star-forming galaxies form stars at a universal rate within a factor 2. The specific SFR (sSFR = SFR/M∗) of star-forming galaxies is found to continuously increase from z = 0 to 4. Finally we discuss the implications of our findings on the cosmic SFR history and on the origin of present-day stars: more than two-thirds of present-day stars must have formed in a regime dominated by the “main sequence” mode. As a consequence we conclude that, although omnipresent in the distant Universe, galaxy mergers had little impact in shaping the global star formation history over the last 12.5 billion years.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d0d790dd3ace61064228cfbb902338434c889e0d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. P. Hopkins
3. R. Somerville
4. R. Dav'e
5. A. Dekel
6. P. V. van Dokkum
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In Instrumentation

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2. P. Hopkins
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. A. Dekel
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6. R. Somerville
7. R. Dav'e
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, background): “There are different MS-prescriptions proposed in the literature (e.g. W12, W14, S14), with differences in zeropoints and slopes in the mass and redshift relations dependent on sample selections (redshift range, survey bands), survey completeness, and methodologies applied to derive M* and SFRs (Renz”
• UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, methodology): “…I Karim et al. (2011) 0.2-3 Radio 2 Santini et al. (2009) 0.3-2.5 IR 0.04 IN Ly et al. (2011b) 1-3 UV 0.24 I Kajisawa et al. (2010) 0.5-3.5 UV/IR 0.03 I Schreiber et al. (2015) 0-4 FIR 1.75 IN Planck Collab. et al. (2014) 0-4 FIR 2240 IN Dunne et al. (2009) 0-4 Radio 0.8 I Cucciati et al. (2012)…”
• The star formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics (2018, background): “…rate (SFR), this relation being commonly called ‘star-forming main sequence’ (hereafter MS or SFMS; e.g. Noeske et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Wuyts et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Speagle et al. 2014; Renzini & Peng 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015; Shivaei et al. 2015).”
• Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, methodology): “This MS definition was based on an extensive reanalysis of all previous work; similar MS definitions have been obtained by Béthermin et al. (2012), Whitaker et al. (2014), Schreiber et al. (2015), Lee et al. (2015) and Tomczak et al. (2016).”
• A remarkably flat relationship between the average star formation rate and AGN luminosity for distant X-ray AGN. (2015, methodology): “5 to calculate the expected range in LIR,SF for ‘main-sequence’ galaxies using equation 9 of Schreiber et al. (2015).”
• Near infrared spectroscopy and star-formation histories of 3 ≤ z ≤ 4 quiescent galaxies (2018, background): “…SFRs sufficiently lower than that expected for an MS galaxy, say below the MS by an order of magnitude or three times the observed MS scatter (e.g., Schreiber et al. 2015), these galaxies must have experienced a particular event in their history which suppressed star formation (either permanently…”
• A deep ALMA image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2016, background): “…rest-frame UV luminosity), as expected from the ‘main sequence’ of star-forming galaxies (e.g. Noeske et al. 2007; Daddi et al. 2007; Elbaz et al. 2010; Micha lowski et al. 2012b; Roseboom et al. 2013; Speagle et al. 2014; Koprowski et al. 2014, 2016; Renzini & Peng 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015).”
• The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, background): “While there is a general consensus regarding an increasing normalization with redshift (e.g., Santini et al. 2009; Speagle et al. 2014; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015; Salmon et al. 2015; Lee et al. 2015; Tomczak et al. 2016), the slope is more uncertain and highly dependent on the…”
• THE SFR–M* RELATION AND EMPIRICAL STAR FORMATION HISTORIES FROM ZFOURGE AT 0.5 < z < 4 (2015, methodology): “1010.2 M⊙), but that this trend flattens at higher masses (see also Whitaker et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015).”
• Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, background): “…in this area (e.g. Noeske et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Wuyts et al. 2011; Whitaker et al. 2012; Speagle et al. 2014; Renzini & Peng 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015; Tasca et al. 2015) to future work, and use the star formation rate in this paper only as a proxy for classifying a galaxy to…”
• The DEIMOS 10K Spectroscopic Survey Catalog of the COSMOS Field (2018, methodology): “The relation for star-forming galaxies at different redshifts (same color code) derived from Herschel photometry by Schreiber et al. (2015) is shown as a dashed line in each panel.”
• The confinement of star-forming galaxies into a main sequence through episodes of gas compaction, depletion and replenishment (2015, methodology): “The characteristic specific star formation rates (sSFR = SFR/M?) of the MS population evolves strongly with redshift, decreasing by a factor of ∼ 20 from z = 2 to today (e.g., Schreiber et al. 2015).”
• The HDUV Survey: A Revised Assessment of the Relationship between UV Slope and Dust Attenuation for High-redshift Galaxies (2017, background): “…(e.g., Noeske et al. 2007; Reddy et al. 2006b; Daddi et al. 2007; Pannella et al. 2009; Wuyts et al. 2011; Reddy et al. 2012b; Whitaker et al. 2014; Schreiber et al. 2015; Shivaei et al. 2015), and between star-formation rate and dust attenuation (e.g., Wang & Heckman 1996; Adelberger & Steidel…”
• ISM MASSES AND THE STAR FORMATION LAW AT Z = 1 TO 6: ALMA OBSERVATIONS OF DUST CONTINUUM IN 145 GALAXIES IN THE COSMOS SURVEY FIELD (2015, background): “In recent years, there have been numerous works specifying the MS evolution (Noeske et al. 2007; Rodighiero et al. 2011; Béthermin et al. 2012; Speagle et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2015; Schreiber et al. 2015).”
• Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, methodology): “The observed relation suggests that galaxy star formation histories are predominantly regular and smooth, i.e., galaxies grow in a secular mode which is usually referred to as the SFR main sequence (SFR-MS; Noeske et al. 2007; Elbaz et al. 2007; Salim et al. 2007; Pannella et al. 2009; Magdis et al.”