Abstract
We derive 2D dust attenuation maps at ∼1 kpc resolution from the UV continuum for 10 galaxies on the
z
∼ 2 star-forming main sequence (SFMS). Comparison with IR data shows that 9 out of 10 ...galaxies do not require further obscuration in addition to the UV-based correction, though our sample does not include the most heavily obscured, massive galaxies. The individual rest-frame
V
-band dust attenuation (
A
V
) radial profiles scatter around an average profile that gently decreases from ∼1.8 mag in the center down to ∼0.6 mag at ∼3–4 half-mass radii. We use these maps to correct UV- and H
α
-based star formation rates (SFRs), which agree with each other. At masses
, the dust-corrected specific SFR (sSFR) profiles are on average radially constant at a mass-doubling timescale of ∼300 Myr, pointing at a synchronous growth of bulge and disk components. At masses
, the sSFR profiles are typically centrally suppressed by a factor of ∼10 relative to the galaxy outskirts. With total central obscuration disfavored, this indicates that at least a fraction of massive
z
∼ 2 SFMS galaxies have started their inside-out star formation quenching that will move them to the quenched sequence. In combination with other observations, galaxies above and below the ridge of the SFMS relation have, respectively, centrally enhanced and centrally suppressed sSFRs relative to their outskirts, supporting a picture where bulges are built owing to gas “compaction” that leads to a high central SFR as galaxies move toward the upper envelope of the SFMS.
ABSTRACT We study the relationship between stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), ionization state, and gas-phase metallicity for a sample of 41 normal star-forming galaxies at 3 z 3.7. The ...gas-phase oxygen abundance, ionization parameter, and electron density of ionized gas are derived from rest-frame optical strong emission lines measured on near-infrared spectra obtained with Keck/Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infra-Red Exploration. We remove the effect of these strong emission lines in the broadband fluxes to compute stellar masses via spectral energy distribution fitting, while the SFR is derived from the dust-corrected ultraviolet luminosity. The ionization parameter is weakly correlated with the specific SFR, but otherwise the ionization parameter and electron density do not correlate with other global galaxy properties such as stellar mass, SFR, and metallicity. The mass-metallicity relation (MZR) at z 3.3 shows lower metallicity by 0.7 dex than that at z = 0 at the same stellar mass. Our sample shows an offset by 0.3 dex from the locally defined mass-metallicity-SFR relation, indicating that simply extrapolating such a relation to higher redshift may predict an incorrect evolution of MZR. Furthermore, within the uncertainties we find no SFR-metallicity correlation, suggesting a less important role of SFR in controlling the metallicity at high redshift. We finally investigate the redshift evolution of the MZR by using the model by Lilly et al., finding that the observed evolution from z = 0 to z 3.3 can be accounted for by the model assuming a weak redshift evolution of the star formation efficiency.
Most present-day galaxies with stellar masses ≥1011 solar masses show no ongoing star formation and are dense spheroids. Ten billion years ago, similarly massive galaxies were typically forming stars ...at rates of hundreds solar masses per year. It is debated how star formation ceased, on which time scales, and how this "quenching" relates to the emergence of dense spheroids. We measured stellar mass and star-formation rate surface density distributions in star-forming galaxies at redshift 2.2 with ∼1-kiloparsec resolution. We find that, in the most massive galaxies, star formation is quenched from the inside out, on time scales less than 1 billion years in the inner regions, up to a few billion years in the outer disks. These galaxies sustain high star-formation activity at large radii, while hosting fully grown and already quenched bulges in their cores.
In the cold dark matter cosmology, the baryonic components of galaxies-stars and gas-are thought to be mixed with and embedded in non-baryonic and non-relativistic dark matter, which dominates the ...total mass of the galaxy and its dark-matter halo. In the local (low-redshift) Universe, the mass of dark matter within a galactic disk increases with disk radius, becoming appreciable and then dominant in the outer, baryonic regions of the disks of star-forming galaxies. This results in rotation velocities of the visible matter within the disk that are constant or increasing with disk radius-a hallmark of the dark-matter model. Comparisons between the dynamical mass, inferred from these velocities in rotational equilibrium, and the sum of the stellar and cold-gas mass at the peak epoch of galaxy formation ten billion years ago, inferred from ancillary data, suggest high baryon fractions in the inner, star-forming regions of the disks. Although this implied baryon fraction may be larger than in the local Universe, the systematic uncertainties (owing to the chosen stellar initial-mass function and the calibration of gas masses) render such comparisons inconclusive in terms of the mass of dark matter. Here we report rotation curves (showing rotation velocity as a function of disk radius) for the outer disks of six massive star-forming galaxies, and find that the rotation velocities are not constant, but decrease with radius. We propose that this trend arises because of a combination of two main factors: first, a large fraction of the massive high-redshift galaxy population was strongly baryon-dominated, with dark matter playing a smaller part than in the local Universe; and second, the large velocity dispersion in high-redshift disks introduces a substantial pressure term that leads to a decrease in rotation velocity with increasing radius. The effect of both factors appears to increase with redshift. Qualitatively, the observations suggest that baryons in the early (high-redshift) Universe efficiently condensed at the centres of dark-matter haloes when gas fractions were high and dark matter was less concentrated.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae and/or non-USASCII text omitted)We obtain the basic properties of the nuclear cluster of the Milky Way. First, we investigate the structural properties by constructing ...a stellar density map of the central 1000'' using extinction-corrected old star counts from VISTA, WFC3/IR, and VLT/NACO data. We describe the data using two components. The inner, slightly flattened (axis ratio of q= 0.80 + or - 0.04) 7 component is the nuclear cluster, while the outer component corresponds to the stellar component of the circumnuclear zone. For the nuclear cluster, we measure a half-light radius of 178 + or - 0.04 51" thickapproximate + or - 2 pc and a luminosity of M sub(ks)= - 16.0 + or - 0.5. Second, we measure detailed dynamics out to 4 pc. We obtain 10,351 proper motions from AO data, and 2513 radial velocities from VLT/SINFONI data. We determine the cluster mass by means of isotropic spherical Jeans modeling. We fix the distance to the Galactic Center and the mass of the supermassive black hole. We model the cluster either with a constant M/L or with a power law. For the latter case, we obtain a slope of 1.18 + or - 0.06. We get a cluster mass within 100'' of ... for both modeling approaches. A model which includes the observed flattening gives a 47% larger mass (see Chatzopoulos et al.). Our results slightly favor a core over a cusp in the mass profile. By minimizing the number of unbound stars within 8'', we obtain a distance of ... kpc when using an R sub(0) supermassive black hole mass relation from stellar orbits. Combining our results, we obtain ... , which is roughly consistent with a Chabrier IMF.
ABSTRACT
In this work, we analyse the connection between gas availability and the position of a region with respect to the spatially resolved main-sequence (MS) relation. Following the procedure ...presented in Enia et al. (2020), for a sample of five face-on, grand design spiral galaxies located on the MS we obtain estimates of stellar mass and star formation rate surface densities (Σ⋆ and ΣSFR) within cells of 500 pc size. Thanks to H i 21cm and 12CO(2–1) maps of comparable resolution, within the same cells we estimate the surface densities of the atomic (ΣH i) and molecular ($\Sigma _{\rm {H_2}}$) gas and explore the correlations among all these quantities. Σ⋆, ΣSFR, and $\Sigma _{\rm {H_2}}$ define a 3D relation whose projections are the spatially resolved MS, the Kennicutt–Schmidt law and the molecular gas MS. We find that $\Sigma _{\rm {H_2}}$ steadily increases along the MS relation and is almost constant perpendicular to it. ΣH i is nearly constant along the MS and increases in its upper envelope. As a result, ΣSFR can be expressed as a function of Σ⋆ and ΣH i, following the relation log ΣSFR = 0.97log Σ⋆ + 1.99log ΣH i − 11.11. We show that the total gas fraction significantly increases towards the starburst regions, accompanied by a weak increase in star formation efficiency. Finally, we find that H2/H i varies strongly with the distance from the MS, dropping dramatically in regions of intense star formation, where the UV radiation from newly formed stars dissociates the H2 molecule, illustrating the self-regulating nature of the star formation process.
Abstract
We investigate the relationship between star formation activity and outflow properties on kiloparsec scales in a sample of 28 star-forming galaxies at
z
∼ 2–2.6, using adaptive optics ...assisted integral field observations from SINFONI on the Very Large Telescope. The narrow and broad components of the H
α
emission are used to simultaneously determine the local star formation rate surface density (
), and the outflow velocity
and mass outflow rate
, respectively. We find clear evidence for faster outflows with larger mass loading factors at higher
. The outflow velocities scale as
∝
0.34±0.10
, which suggests that the outflows may be driven by a combination of mechanical energy released by supernova explosions and stellar winds, as well as radiation pressure acting on dust grains. The majority of the outflowing material does not have sufficient velocity to escape from the galaxy halos, but will likely be re-accreted and contribute to the chemical enrichment of the galaxies. In the highest
regions the outflow component contains an average of ∼45% of the H
α
flux, while in the lower
regions only ∼10% of the H
α
flux is associated with outflows. The mass loading factor,
η
=
/SFR, is positively correlated with
but is relatively low even at the highest
:
η
≲ 0.5 × (380 cm
−3
/
n
e
). This may be in tension with the
η
≳ 1 required by cosmological simulations, unless a significant fraction of the outflowing mass is in other gas phases and has sufficient velocity to escape the galaxy halos.
We use >9400 quiescent and star-forming galaxies at z 2 in COSMOS/UltraVISTA to study the average size evolution of these systems, with focus on the rare ultra-massive population at . The large 2 ...square degree survey area delivers a sample of ∼400 such ultra-massive systems. Accurate sizes are derived using a calibration based on high-resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope. We find that at these very high masses, the size evolution of star-forming and quiescent galaxies is almost indistinguishable in terms of normalization and power-law slope. We use this result to investigate possible pathways of quenching massive m > M* galaxies at z < 2. We consistently model the size evolution of quiescent galaxies from the star-forming population by assuming different simple models for the suppression of star formation. These models include an instantaneous and delayed quenching without altering the structure of galaxies and a central starburst followed by compaction. We find that instantaneous quenching reproduces the observed mass-size relation of massive galaxies at z > 1 well. Our starburst+compaction model followed by individual growth of the galaxies by minor mergers is preferred over other models without structural change for galaxies at z > 0.5. None of our models is able to meet the observations at m > M* and z < 1 without significant contribution of post-quenching growth of individual galaxies via mergers. We conclude that quenching is a fast process in galaxies with m ≥ 1011 M , and that major mergers likely play a major role in the final steps of their evolution.
Abstract
We present the “SINS/zC-SINF AO survey” of 35 star-forming galaxies, the largest sample with deep adaptive optics (AO)–assisted near-infrared integral field spectroscopy at
z
∼ 2. The ...observations, taken with SINFONI at the Very Large Telescope, resolve the H
α
and N
ii
emission and kinematics on scales of ∼1.5 kpc. The sample probes the massive (
M
⋆
∼ 2 × 10
9
− 3 × 10
11
M
⊙
), actively star-forming (SFR ∼ 10–600
M
⊙
yr
−1
) part of the
z
∼ 2 galaxy population over a wide range of colors ((
U
−
V
)
rest
∼ 0.15–1.5 mag) and half-light radii (
R
e,H
∼ 1–8.5 kpc). The sample overlaps largely with the “main sequence” of star-forming galaxies in the same redshift range to a similar
K
AB
= 23 mag limit; it has ∼0.3 dex higher median specific SFR, ∼0.1 mag bluer median (
U
−
V
)
rest
color, and ∼10% larger median rest-optical size. We describe the observations, data reduction, and extraction of basic flux and kinematic properties. With typically 3–4 times higher resolution and 4–5 times longer integrations (up to 23 hr) than the seeing-limited data sets of the same objects, the AO data reveal much more detail in morphology and kinematics. The complete AO observations confirm the majority of kinematically classified disks and the typically elevated disk velocity dispersions previously reported based on subsets of the data. We derive typically flat or slightly negative radial N
ii
/
gradients, with no significant trend with global galaxy properties, kinematic nature, or the presence of an AGN. Azimuthal variations in N
ii
/
are seen in several sources and are associated with ionized gas outflows and possibly more metal-poor star-forming clumps or small companions. The reduced AO data are made publicly available (
http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/SINS/SINS-zcSINF-data
).
We observed Hubble Deep Field South with the new panoramic integral-field spectrograph MUSE that we built and have just commissioned at the VLT. The data cube resulting from 27 h of integration ...covers one arcmin2 field of view at an unprecedented depth with a 1σ emission-line surface brightness limit of 1 × 10-19 erg s-1 cm-2 arcsec-2, and contains ~90 000 spectra. We present the combined and calibrated data cube, and we performed a first-pass analysis of the sources detected in the Hubble Deep Field South imaging. We measured the redshifts of 189 sources up to a magnitude I814 = 29.5, increasing the number of known spectroscopic redshifts in this field by more than an order of magnitude. We also discovered 26 Lyα emitting galaxies that are not detected in the HST WFPC2 deep broad-band images. The intermediate spectral resolution of 2.3 Å allows us to separate resolved asymmetric Lyα emitters, O ii3727 emitters, and C iii1908 emitters, and the broad instantaneous wavelength range of 4500 Å helps to identify single emission lines, such as O iii5007, Hβ, and Hα, over a very wide redshift range. We also show how the three-dimensional information of MUSE helps to resolve sources that are confused at ground-based image quality. Overall, secure identifications are provided for 83% of the 227 emission line sources detected in the MUSE data cube and for 32% of the 586 sources identified in the HST catalogue. The overall redshift distribution is fairly flat to z = 6.3, with a reduction between z = 1.5 to 2.9, in the well-known redshift desert. The field of view of MUSE also allowed us to detect 17 groups within the field. We checked that the number counts of O ii3727 and Lyα emitters are roughly consistent with predictions from the literature. Using two examples, we demonstrate that MUSE is able to provide exquisite spatially resolved spectroscopic information on the intermediate-redshift galaxies present in the field. Thisunique data set can be used for a wide range of follow-up studies. We release the data cube, the associated products, and the source catalogue with redshifts, spectra, and emission-line fluxes.
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