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Published March 2022 | Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

GOODS-ALMA 2.0: Starbursts in the main sequence reveal compact star formation regulating galaxy evolution prequenching

Abstract

Compact star formation appears to be generally common in dusty star-forming galaxies (SFGs). However, its role in the framework set by the scaling relations in galaxy evolution remains to be understood. In this work we follow up on the galaxy sample from the GOODS-ALMA 2.0 survey, an ALMA blind survey at 1.1 mm covering a continuous area of 72.42 arcmin² using two array configurations. We derived physical properties, such as star formation rates, gas fractions, depletion timescales, and dust temperatures for the galaxy sample built from the survey. There exists a subset of galaxies that exhibit starburst-like short depletion timescales, but they are located within the scatter of the so-called main sequence of SFGs. These are dubbed starbursts in the main sequence and display the most compact star formation and they are characterized by the shortest depletion timescales, lowest gas fractions, and highest dust temperatures of the galaxy sample, compared to typical SFGs at the same stellar mass and redshift. They are also very massive, accounting for ∼60% of the most massive galaxies in the sample (log(M*/M_⊙) > 11.0). We find trends between the areas of the ongoing star formation regions and the derived physical properties for the sample, unveiling the role of compact star formation as a physical driver of these properties. Starbursts in the main sequence appear to be the extreme cases of these trends. We discuss possible scenarios of galaxy evolution to explain the results drawn from our galaxy sample. Our findings suggest that the star formation rate is sustained in SFGs by gas and star formation compression, keeping them within the main sequence even when their gas fractions are low and they are presumably on the way to quiescence.

Additional Information

© C. Gómez-Guijarro et al. 2022. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Received 1 October 2021 / Accepted 16 December 2021. V.I.K. and G.E.M. acknowledge the Villum Fonden research grant 13160 "Gas to stars, stars to dust: tracing star formation across cosmic time" and the Cosmic Dawn Center of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant No. 140. M.T.S. acknowledges support from a Scientific Exchanges visitor fellowship (IZSEZO_202357) from the Swiss National Science Foundation. M.F. acknowledges the support from STFC (grant number ST/R000905/1). H.I. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K23462 and JP21H01129. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2015.1.00543.S and ADS/JAO.ALMA#2017.1.00755.S. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. We are grateful to the anonymous referee, whose comments have been very useful to improve our work.

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Accepted Version - 2201.02633.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023