Local starbursts have a higher efficiency of converting gas into stars, as compared to typical star-forming galaxies at a given stellar mass, possibly indicative of different modes of star formation. With the peak epoch of galaxy formation occurring at z > 1, it remains to be established whether such an efficient mode of star formation is occurring at high-redshift. To address this issue, we measure the molecular gas content of seven high-redshift (z ~ 1.6) starburst galaxies with the Atacama Large (sub-)Millimeter Array and IRAM/Plateau de Bure Interferometer. Our targets are selected from the sample of Herschel far-infrared detected galaxies having star formation rates (~300-800 Msolar/yr) elevated (>4x) above the star-forming `main sequence, and included in the FMOS-COSMOS near-infrared spectroscopic survey of star-forming galaxies at z ~ 1.6 with Subaru. We detect CO emission in all cases at high levels of significance, indicative of high gas fractions (~30-50%). Even more compelling, we firmly establish with a clean and systematic selection that starbursts, identified as main-sequence outliers, at high redshift generally have a lower ratio of CO to total infrared luminosity as compared to typical main-sequence star-forming galaxies, although with a smaller offset than expected based on past studies of local starbursts. We put forward a hypothesis that there exists a continuous increase in star formation efficiency with elevation from the main sequence with galaxy mergers as a possible physical driver. Along with a heightened star formation efficiency, our high-redshift sample is similar in other respects to local starbursts such as being metal rich and having a higher ionization state of the interstellar medium.
When the cosmic star formation history peaks (z ~ 2), galaxies vigorously fed by cosmic reservoirs are gas dominated and contain massive star-forming clumps, thought to form by violent gravitational instabilities in highly turbulent gas-rich disks. However, a clump formation event has not been witnessed yet, and it is debated whether clumps survive energetic feedback from young stars, thus migrating inwards to form galaxy bulges. Here we report spatially resolved spectroscopy of a bright off-nuclear emission line region in a galaxy at z = 1.987. Although this region dominates the star formation in the galaxy disk, its stellar continuum remains undetected in deep imaging, revealing an extremely young (age < 10 Myr) massive clump, forming through the gravitational collapse of > 10$^9$ M$_{odot}$ of gas. Gas consumption in this young clump is > 10 times faster than in the host galaxy, displaying high star formation efficiency during this phase, in agreement with our hydrodynamic simulations. The frequency of older clumps with similar masses coupled with our initial estimate of their formation rate (~ 2.5 Gyr$^{-1}$) supports long lifetimes (~ 500 Myr), favouring scenarios where clumps survive feedback and grow the bulges of present-day galaxies.
Even 10 billion years ago, the cores of the first galaxy clusters are often found to host a characteristic population of massive galaxies with already suppressed star formation. Here we search for distant cluster candidates at z~2 using massive passive galaxies as tracers. With a sample of ~40 spectroscopically confirmed passive galaxies at 1.3<z<2.1, we tune photometric redshifts of several thousands passive sources in the full 2 sq.deg. COSMOS field. This allows us to map their density in redshift slices, probing the large scale structure in the COSMOS field as traced by passive sources. We report here on the three strongest passive galaxy overdensities that we identify in the redshift range 1.5<z<2.5. While the actual nature of these concentrations is still to be confirmed, we discuss their identification procedure, and the arguments supporting them as candidate galaxy clusters (likely mid-10^13 M_sun range). Although this search approach is likely biased towards more evolved structures, it has the potential to select still rare, cluster-like environments close to their epoch of first appearance, enabling new investigations of the evolution of galaxies in the context of structure growth.
We investigate the co-evolution of black-hole-accretion-rate (BHAR) and star-formation-rate (SFR) in $1.5<z<2.5$ galaxies displaying a greater diversity of star-forming properties compared to previous studies. We combine X-ray stacking and far-IR photometry of stellar mass-limited samples of normal star-forming, starburst and quiescent/quenched galaxies in the COSMOS field. We corroborate the existence of a strong correlation between BHAR (i.e. the X-ray luminosity, L_X), and stellar mass (M*) for normal star-forming galaxies, although find a steeper relation than previously reported. We find that starbursts show a factor of 3 enhancement in BHAR compared to normal SF galaxies (against a factor of 6 excess in SFR), while quiescents show a deficit of a factor 5.5 at a given mass. One possible interpretation of this is that the starburst phase does not coincide with cosmologically relevant BH growth, or that starburst-inducing mergers are more efficient at boosting SFR than BHAR. Contrary to studies based on smaller samples, we find the BHAR/SFR ratio of main sequence (MS) galaxies is not mass invariant, but scales weakly as M*^(0.43pm0.09}, implying faster BH growth in more massive galaxies at $zsim2$. Furthermore, BHAR/SFR during the starburst is a factor of 2 lower than in MS galaxies, at odds with the predictions of hydrodynamical simulations of merger galaxies that foresee a sudden enhancement of L_X/SFR during the merger. Finally, we estimate that the bulk of the accretion density of the Universe at $zsim2$ is associated with normal star-forming systems, with only 6(+/-1)% and 11(+/-1)% associated with starburst and quiescent galaxies, respectively.
We compare various star formation rate (SFR) indicators for star-forming galaxies at $1.4<z<2.5$ in the COSMOS field. The main focus is on the SFRs from the far-IR (PACS-Herschel data) with those from the ultraviolet, for galaxies selected according to the BzK criterion. FIR-selected samples lead to a vastly different slope of the SFR-stellar mass ($M_*$) relation, compared to that of the dominant main sequence population as measured from the UV, since the FIR selection picks predominantly only a minority of outliers. However, there is overall agreement between the main sequences derived with the two SFR indicators, when stacking on the PACS maps the BzK-selected galaxies. The resulting logarithmic slope of the SFR-{$M_*$} relation is $sim0.8-0.9$, in agreement with that derived from the dust-corrected UV-luminosity. Exploiting deeper 24$mu$m-Spitzer data we have characterized a sub-sample of galaxies with reddening and SFRs poorly constrained, as they are very faint in the $B$ band. The combination of Herschel with Spitzer data have allowed us to largely break the age/reddening degeneracy for these intriguing sources, by distinguishing whether a galaxy is very red in B-z because of being heavily dust reddened, or whether because star formation has been (or is being) quenched. Finally, we have compared our SFR(UV) to the SFRs derived by stacking the radio data and to those derived from the H$alpha$ luminosity of a sample of star-forming galaxies at $1.4<z<1.7$. The two sets of SFRs are broadly consistent as they are with the SFRs derived from the UV and by stacking the corresponding PACS data in various mass bins.
We present observations of the CO[3-2] emission towards two massive and infrared luminous Lyman Break Galaxies at z = 3.21 and z = 2.92, using the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer, placing first constraints on the molecular gas masses (Mgas) of non-lensed LBGs. Their overall properties are consistent with those of typical (Main-Sequence) galaxies at their redshifts, with specific star formation rates ~1.6 and ~2.2 Gyr^(-1), despite their large infrared luminosities L_IR ~2-3 x 10^12 Lsun derived from Herschel. With one plausible CO detection (spurious detection probability of 10^(-3)) and one upper limit, we investigate the evolution of the molecular gas-to-stellar mass ratio (Mgas/M*) with redshift. Our data suggest that the steep evolution of Mgas/M* of normal galaxies up to z~2 is followed by a flattening at higher redshifts, providing supporting evidence for the existence of a plateau in the evolution of the specific star formation rate at z > 2.5.
Two main modes of star formation are know to control the growth of galaxies: a relatively steady one in disk-like galaxies, defining a tight star formation rate (SFR)-stellar mass sequence, and a starburst mode in outliers to such a sequence which is generally interpreted as driven by merging. Such starburst galaxies are rare but have much higher SFRs, and it is of interest to establish the relative importance of these two modes. PACS/Herschel observations over the whole COSMOS and GOODS-South fields, in conjunction with previous optical/near-IR data, have allowed us to accurately quantify for the first time the relative contribution of the two modes to the global SFR density in the redshift interval 1.5<z<2.5, i.e., at the cosmic peak of the star formation activity. The logarithmic distributions of galaxy SFRs at fixed stellar mass are well described by Gaussians, with starburst galaxies representing only a relatively minor deviation that becomes apparent for SFRs more than 4 times higher than on the main sequence. Such starburst galaxies represent only 2% of mass-selected star forming galaxies and account for only 10% of the cosmic SFR density at z~2. Only when limited to SFR>1000M(sun)/yr, off-sequence sources significantly contribute to the SFR density (46+/-20%). We conclude that merger-driven starbursts play a relatively minor role for the formation of stars in galaxies, whereas they may represent a critical phase towards the quenching of star formation and morphological transformation in galaxies.
We present a study of the infrared properties of X-ray selected, moderate luminosity (Lx=10^{42}-10^{44}ergs/s) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) up to z~3, to explore the links between star formation in galaxies and accretion onto their central black holes. We use 100um and 160um fluxes from GOODS-Herschel -the deepest survey yet undertaken by the Herschel telescope- and show that in >94 per cent of cases these fluxes are dominated by the host. We find no evidence of any correlation between the X-ray and infrared luminosities of moderate AGNs at any redshift, suggesting that star-formation is decoupled from nuclear (AGN) activity. The star formation rates of AGN hosts increase strongly with redshift; by a factor of 43 from z<0.1 to z=2-3 for AGNs with the same X-ray luminosities. This increase is consistent with the factor of 25-50 increase in the specific star formation rates (SSFRs) of normal, star-forming (main-sequence) galaxies. Indeed, the average SSFRs of AGN hosts are only marginally (20 per cent) lower than those of main-sequence galaxies, with this small deficit being due to a fraction of AGNs residing in quiescent (low-SSFR) galaxies. We estimate 79+/-10 per cent of moderate AGNs are hosted in main-sequence galaxies, 15+/-7 per cent in quiescent galaxies and <10 per cent in strongly starbursting galaxies. The fractions of all main sequence galaxies at z<2 experiencing a period of moderate nuclear activity is strongly dependent on galaxy stellar mass (Mstars); rising from a few per cent at Mstars~10^{10}Msun to >20 per cent at Mstars>10^{11}Msun. Our results indicate that it is galaxy stellar mass that is most important in dictating whether a galaxy hosts a moderate luminosity AGN. We argue that the majority of moderate nuclear activity is fuelled by internal mechanisms rather than violent mergers, suggesting that disk instabilities could be an important AGN feeding mechanism.
We present a search for Herschel-PACS counterparts of dust-obscured, high-redshift objects previously selected at submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North field. We detect 22 of 56 submillimeter galaxies (39%) with a SNR of >=3 at 100 micron down to 3.0 mJy, and/or at 160 micron down to 5.7 mJy. The fraction of SMGs seen at 160 micron is higher than that at 100 micron. About 50% of radio-identified SMGs are associated with PACS sources. We find a trend between the SCUBA/PACS flux ratio and redshift, suggesting that these flux ratios could be used as a coarse redshift indicator. PACS undetected submm/mm selected sources tend to lie at higher redshifts than the PACS detected ones. A total of 12 sources (21% of our SMG sample) remain unidentified and the fact that they are blank fields at Herschel-PACS and VLA 20 cm wavelength may imply higher redshifts for them than for the average SMG population (e.g., z>3-4). The Herschel-PACS imaging of these dust-obscured starbursts at high-redshifts suggests that their far-infrared spectral energy distributions have significantly different shapes than template libraries of local infrared galaxies.
We present observations of a very massive galaxy at z=1.82 which show that its morphology, size, velocity dispersion and stellar population properties that are fully consistent with those expected for passively evolving progenitors of todays giant ellipticals. These findings are based on a deep optical rest-frame spectrum obtained with the Multi-Object InfraRed Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS) on the Subaru telescope of a high-z passive galaxy candidate (pBzK) from the COSMOS field, for which we accurately measure its redshift of z=1.8230 and obtain an upper limit on its velocity dispersion sigma_star<326 km/s. By detailed stellar population modeling of both the galaxy broad-band SED and the rest-frame optical spectrum we derive a star-formation-weighted age and formation redshift of t_sf~1-2 Gyr and z_form~2.5-4, and a stellar mass of M_star~(3-4)x10^{11} M_sun. This is in agreement with a virial mass limit of M_vir<7x10^{11}M_sun, derived from the measured sigma_star value and stellar half-light radius, as well as with the dynamical mass limit based on the Jeans equations. In contrast with previously reported super-dense passive galaxies at z~2, the present galaxy at z=1.82 appears to have both size and velocity dispersion similar to early-type galaxies in the local Universe with similar stellar mass. This suggests that z~2 massive and passive galaxies may exhibit a wide range of properties, then possibly following quite different evolutionary histories from z~2 to z=0.
