Non-linearity and environmental dependence of the star forming galaxies Main Sequence
Abstract
Using data from four deep fields (COSMOS, AEGIS, ECDFS, and CDFN), we study the correlation between the position of galaxies in the star formation rate (SFR) versus stellar mass plane and local environment at . To accurately estimate the galaxy SFR, we use the deepest available Spitzer/MIPS 24 and Herschel/PACS datasets. We distinguish group environments ( 10) based on the available deep X-ray data and lower halo mass environments based on the local galaxy density. We confirm that the Main Sequence (MS) of star forming galaxies is not a linear relation and there is a flattening towards higher stellar masses ( ), across all environments. At high redshift ( ), the MS varies little with environment. At low redshift ( ), group galaxies tend to deviate from the mean MS towards the region of quiescence with respect to isolated galaxies and less-dense environments. We find that the flattening of the MS toward low SFR is due to an increased fraction of bulge dominated galaxies at high masses. Instead, the deviation of group galaxies from the MS at low redshift is caused by a large fraction of red disk dominated galaxies which are not present in the lower density environments. Our results suggest that above a mass threshold ( ) stellar mass, morphology and environment act together in driving the evolution of the SF activity towards lower level. The presence of a dominating bulge and the associated quenching processes are already in place beyond 1. The environmental effects appear, instead, at lower redshifts and have a long time-scale.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1511.01899,
title = {Non-linearity and environmental dependence of the star forming galaxies Main Sequence},
author = {G. Erfanianfar and P. Popesso and A. Finoguenov and D. Wilman and S. Wuyts and A. Biviano and M. Salvato and M. Mirkazemi and L. Morselli and F. Ziparo and K. Nandra and D. Lutz and D. Elbaz and M. Dickinson and M. Tanaka and M. B. Altieri and H. Aussel and F. Bauer and S. Berta and R. M. Bielby and N. Brandt and N. Cappelluti and A. Cimatti and M. C. Cooper and D. Fadda and O. Ilbert and E. Le Floch and B. Magnelli and J. S. Mulchaey and R. Nordon and J. A. Newman and A. Poglitsch and F. Pozzi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.01899},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS