HELP: star formation as a function of galaxy environment with Herschel

Creators: Duivenvoorden, S.; Oliver, S.; Buat, V.; Darvish, B.; Efstathiou, A.; Farrah, D.; Griffin, M.; Hurley, P. D.; Ibar, E.; Jarvis, M.; Papadopoulos, A.; Sargent, M. T.; Scott, D.; Scudder, J. M.; Symeonidis, M.; Vaccari, M.; Viero, M. P.; Wang, L.

Abstract

The Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP) brings together a vast range of data from many astronomical observatories. Its main focus is on the Herschel data, which maps dust-obscured star formation over 1300 deg2. With this unprecedented combination of data sets, it is possible to investigate how the star formation versus stellar mass relation (main sequence) of star-forming galaxies depends on environment. In this pilot study, we explore this question within 0.1 < z < 3.2 using data in the COSMOS field. We estimate the local environment from a smoothed galaxy density field using the full photometric redshift probability distribution. We estimate star formation rates by stacking the SPIRE data from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. Our analysis rules out the hypothesis that the main sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at 1.5 < z < 2, while a simple model in which the mean specific star formation rate declines with increasing environmental density gives a better description. However, we cannot exclude a simple hypothesis in which the main sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at z < 1.5 and z > 2. We also estimate the evolution of the star formation rate density in the COSMOS field, and our results are consistent with previous measurements at z < 1.5 and z > 2 but we find a 1.4^(+0.3)_(−0.2) times higher peak value of the star formation rate density at z ∼ 1.9.

Additional Information

© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted 2016 June 16. Received 2016 June 16. In original form 2016 January 21. First published online June 20, 2016. We thank the referee for very useful comments that improved the quality of the work. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 607254. This publication reflects only the authors' view and the European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. SD acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (grant number ST/M503836/1). SO acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (grant number ST/L000652/1). BD acknowledges financial support from NASA through the Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP), grant number NNX12AE20G. EI acknowledges funding from CONICYT/FONDECYT postdoctoral project No. 3130504. MV acknowledges support from the Square Kilometre Array South Africa project, the South African National Research Foundation and Department of Science and Technology (DST/CON 0134/2014) and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (PGR GA ZA14GR02). SPIRE has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by Cardiff Univ. (UK) and including Univ. Lethbridge (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, LAM (France); IFSI, Univ. Padua (Italy); IAC (Spain); Stockholm Observatory (Sweden); Imperial College London, RAL, UCL-MSSL, UKATC, Univ. Sussex (UK); Caltech, JPL, NHSC, Univ. Colorado (USA). This development has been supported by national funding agencies: CSA (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, CNES, CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); MCINN (Spain); SNSB (Sweden); STFC, UKSA (UK); and NASA (USA).

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Published - MNRASDuivenvoorden,S.etal.pdf

Submitted - 1606.05377v1.pdf

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