A decade of study has established that the molecular gas properties of star-forming galaxies follow coherent scaling relations out to z ∼ 3, suggesting remarkable regularity of the interplay between ...molecular gas, star formation, and stellar growth. Passive galaxies, however, are expected to be gas-poor and therefore faint, and thus little is known about molecular gas in passive galaxies beyond the local universe. Here we present deep Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of CO(2-1) emission in eight massive (Mstar ∼ 1011 M ) galaxies at z ∼ 0.7 selected to lie a factor of 3-10 below the star-forming sequence at this redshift, drawn from the Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census survey. We significantly detect half the sample, finding molecular gas fractions 0.1. We show that the molecular and stellar rotational axes are broadly consistent, arguing that the molecular gas was not accreted after the galaxies became quiescent. We find that scaling relations extrapolated from the star-forming population overpredict both the gas fraction and gas depletion time for passive objects, suggesting the existence of either a break or large increase in scatter in these relations at low specific star formation rate. Finally, we show that the gas fractions of the passive galaxies we have observed at intermediate redshifts are naturally consistent with evolution into local, massive early-type galaxies by continued low-level star formation, with no need for further gas accretion or dynamical stabilization of the gas reservoirs in the intervening 6 billion years.
We present a new, open source, free, semi-analytic model (SAM) of galaxy formation, SHARK, designed to be highly flexible and modular, allowing easy exploration of different physical processes and ...ways of modelling them. We introduce the philosophy behind SHARK and provide an overview of the physical processes included in the model. SHARK is written in C++11 and has been parallelized with OpenMP. In the released version (V1.1), we implement several different models for gas cooling, active galactic nuclei, stellar and photo-ionization feedback, and star formation (SF). We demonstrate the basic performance of SHARK using the Planck Collaboration et al. (2016) cosmology SURFS simulations, by comparing against a large set of observations, including: the stellar mass function (SMF) and stellar-halo mass relation at z = 0-4; the cosmic evolution of the star formation rate density (SFRD), stellar mass, atomic and molecular hydrogen; local gas scaling relations; and structural galaxy properties, finding excellent agreement. Significant improvements over previous SAMs are seen in the mass-size relation for discs/bulges, the gas-stellar mass and stellar mass-metallicity relations. To illustrate the power of SHARK in exploring the systematic effects of the galaxy formation modelling, we quantify how the scatter of the SF main sequence and the gas scaling relations changes with the adopted SF law, and the effect of the starbursts H2 depletion time-scale on the SFRD and Ω _H_2. We compare SHARK with other SAMs and the hydrodynamical simulation EAGLE, and find that SAMs have a much higher halo baryon fractions due to large amounts of intra-halo gas, which in the case of EAGLE is in the intergalactic medium.
In this paper, we investigate environment-driven gas depletion in satellite galaxies, taking full advantage of the atomic hydrogen (H i) spectral stacking technique to quantify the gas content for ...the entire gas-poor to -rich regimes. We do so using a multiwavelength sample of 10 600 satellite galaxies, selected according to stellar mass (log M*/M... greater than or equal to 9) and redshift (0.02 less than or equal to z less than or equal to 0.05) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with H i data from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey. Using key H i-to-stellar mass scaling relations, we present evidence that the gas content of satellite galaxies is, to a significant extent, dependent on the environment in which a galaxy resides. For the first time, we demonstrate that systematic environmental suppression of gas content at both fixed stellar mass and fixed specific star formation rate in satellite galaxies begins in halo masses typical of the group regime (log M sub( h)/M... < 13.5), well before galaxies reach the cluster environment. We also show that environment-driven gas depletion is more closely associated with halo mass than local density. Our results are then compared with state-of-the-art semi-analytic models and hydrodynamical simulations and discussed within this framework, showing that more work is needed if models are to reproduce the observations. We conclude that the observed decrease of gas content in the group and cluster environments cannot be reproduced by starvation of the gas supply alone and invoke fast acting processes such as ram-pressure stripping of cold gas to explain this. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
Abstract
We combine the galaxy formation model galform with the photon-dominated region code ucl−pdr to study the emission from the rotational transitions of 12CO (CO) in galaxies from z = 0 to z = 6 ...in the Λcold dark matter framework. galform is used to predict the molecular (H2) and atomic hydrogen (H i) gas contents of galaxies using the pressure-based empirical star formation relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky. From the predicted H2 mass and the conditions in the interstellar medium, we estimate the CO emission in the rotational transitions 1-0 to 10-9 by applying the ucl−pdr model to each galaxy. We find that deviations from the Milky Way CO-H2 conversion factor come mainly from variations in metallicity, and in the average gas and star formation rate surface densities. In the local universe, the model predicts a CO(1-0) luminosity function (LF), CO-to-total infrared (IR) luminosity ratios for multiple CO lines and a CO spectral line energy distribution (SLED) which are in good agreement with observations of luminous and ultra-luminous IR galaxies. At high redshifts, the predicted CO SLED of the brightest IR galaxies reproduces the shape and normalization of the observed CO SLED. The model predicts little evolution in the CO-to-IR luminosity ratio for different CO transitions, in good agreement with observations up to z ≈ 5. We use this new hybrid model to explore the potential of using colour-selected samples of high-redshift star-forming galaxies to characterize the evolution of the cold gas mass in galaxies through observations with the Atacama Large Millimetre Array.
ABSTRACT
We present catalogues of stellar masses, star formation rates (SFRs), and ancillary stellar population parameters for galaxies spanning 0 < z < 9 from the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy ...Survey (DEVILS). DEVILS is a deep spectroscopic redshift survey with very high completeness, covering several premier deep fields including COSMOS (D10). Our stellar mass and SFR estimates are self-consistently derived using the spectral energy distribution (SED) modelling code ProSpect, using well-motivated parametrizations for dust attenuation, star formation histories, and metallicity evolution. We show how these improvements, and especially our physically motivated assumptions about metallicity evolution, have an appreciable systematic effect on the inferred stellar masses, at the level of ∼0.2 dex. To illustrate the scientific value of these data, we map the evolving galaxy stellar mass function (SMF) and the SFR–M⋆ relation for 0 < z < 4.25. In agreement with past studies, we find that most of the evolution in the SMF is driven by the characteristic density parameter, with little evolution in the characteristic mass and low-mass slopes. Where the SFR–M⋆ relation is indistinguishable from a power law at z > 2.6, we see evidence of a bend in the relation at low redshifts (z < 0.45). This suggests evolution in both the normalization and shape of the SFR–M⋆ relation since cosmic noon. It is significant that we only clearly see this bend when combining our new DEVILS measurements with consistently derived values for lower redshift galaxies from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey: this shows the power of having consistent treatment for galaxies at all redshifts.
ABSTRACT
We study the Intra-Halo Stellar Component (IHSC) of Milky Way-mass systems up to galaxy clusters in the Horizon-AGN cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We identify the IHSC using an ...improved phase-space galaxy finder algorithm which provides an adaptive, physically motivated, and shape-independent definition of this stellar component, that can be applied to haloes of arbitrary masses. We explore the IHSC mass fraction – total halo’s stellar mass, $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}} - M_{*}$, relation, and the physical drivers of its scatter. We find that on average, the $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ increases with total stellar mass, with the scatter decreasing strongly with mass from 2 dex at $M_{*,\mathrm{tot}}\simeq 10^{11}\, \mathrm{M}_\odot$ to 0.3 dex at group masses. At high masses, $M_{*,\mathrm{tot}}\gt 10^{11.5}\, \mathrm{M}_\odot$, $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ increases with the number of substructures, and with the mass ratio between the central galaxy and largest satellite, at fixed M*, tot. From mid-size groups and systems below $M_{*,\mathrm{tot}}\lt 10^{12}\, \mathrm{M}_\odot$, we find that the central galaxy’s stellar rotation-to-dispersion velocity ratio, V/σ, displays the strongest (anti)-correlation with $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ at fixed M*, tot of all the galaxy and halo properties explored, transitioning from $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}\lt 0.1$ per cent for high V/σ, to $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}\approx 5$ per cent for low V/σ galaxies. By studying the $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ temporal evolution, we find that, in the former, mergers not always take place, but if they did, they happened early (z > 1), while the high $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ population displays a much more active merger history. In the case of massive groups and galaxy clusters, $M_{*,\mathrm{tot}}\gtrsim 10^{12}\, \mathrm{M}_\odot$, a fraction $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}\approx 10-20$ per cent is reached at z ≈ 1 and then they evolve across lines of constant $f_{M_{*,\mathrm{IHSC}}}$ modulo some small perturbations. Because of the limited simulation’s volume, the latter is only tentative and requires a larger sample of simulated galaxy clusters to confirm.
ABSTRACT
We have recently developed a post-processing framework to estimate the abundance of atomic and molecular hydrogen (H i and H2, respectively) in galaxies in large-volume cosmological ...simulations. Here we compare the H i and H2 content of IllustrisTNG galaxies to observations. We mostly restrict this comparison to z ≈ 0 and consider six observational metrics: the overall abundance of H i and H2, their mass functions, gas fractions as a function of stellar mass, the correlation between H2 and star formation rate, the spatial distribution of gas, and the correlation between gas content and morphology. We find generally good agreement between simulations and observations, particularly for the gas fractions and the H i mass–size relation. The H2 mass correlates with star formation rate as expected, revealing an almost constant depletion time that evolves up to z = 2 as observed. However, we also discover a number of tensions with varying degrees of significance, including an overestimate of the total neutral gas abundance at z = 0 by about a factor of 2 and a possible excess of satellites with no or very little neutral gas. These conclusions are robust to the modelling of the H i/H2 transition. In terms of their neutral gas properties, the IllustrisTNG simulations represent an enormous improvement over the original Illustris run. All data used in this paper are publicly available as part of the IllustrisTNG data release.
Abstract
We select and characterize a sample of massive (log(
M
*
/
M
⊙
) > 10.6) quiescent galaxies (QGs) at 3 <
z
< 5 in the latest Cosmological Evolution Survey catalog (COSMOS2020). QGs are ...selected using a new rest-frame color-selection method, based on their probability of belonging to the quiescent group defined by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) trained on rest-frame colors (
NUV
−
U
,
U
−
V
,
V
−
J
) of similarly massive galaxies at 2 <
z
< 3. We calculate the quiescent probability threshold above which a galaxy is classified as quiescent using simulated galaxies from the
shark
semi-analytical model. We find that, at
z
≥ 3 in
shark
, the GMM/
NUVU
−
VJ
method outperforms classical rest-frame
UVJ
selection and is a viable alternative. We select galaxies as quiescent based on their probability in COSMOS2020 at 3 <
z
< 5, and compare the selected sample to both
UVJ
- and
NUVrJ
-selected samples. We find that, although the new selection matches
UVJ
and
NUVrJ
in number, the overlap between color selections is only ∼50%–80%, implying that rest-frame color commonly used at lower-redshift selections cannot be equivalently used at
z
> 3. We compute median rest-frame spectral energy distributions for our sample and find the median QG at 3 <
z
< 5 has a strong Balmer/4000 Å break, and residual
NUV
flux indicating recent quenching. We find the number densities of the entire quiescent population (including post-starbursts) more than doubles from 3.5 ± 2.2 × 10
−6
Mpc
−3
at 4 <
z
< 5 to 1.4 ± 0.4 × 10
−5
Mpc
−3
at 3 <
z
< 4, confirming that the onset of massive galaxy quenching occurs as early as 3 <
z
< 5.