No Arabic abstract
We investigate the physics driving the cosmic star formation (SF) history using the more than fifty large, cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations that together comprise the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations (OWLS) project. We systematically vary the parameters of the model to determine which physical processes are dominant and which aspects of the model are robust. Generically, we find that SF is limited by the build-up of dark matter haloes at high redshift, reaches a broad maximum at intermediate redshift, then decreases as it is quenched by lower cooling rates in hotter and lower density gas, gas exhaustion, and self-regulated feedback from stars and black holes. The higher redshift SF is therefore mostly determined by the cosmological parameters and to a lesser extent by photo-heating from reionization. The location and height of the peak in the SF history, and the steepness of the decline towards the present, depend on the physics and implementation of stellar and black hole feedback. Mass loss from intermediate-mass stars and metal-line cooling both boost the SF rate at late times. Galaxies form stars in a self-regulated fashion at a rate controlled by the balance between, on the one hand, feedback from massive stars and black holes and, on the other hand, gas cooling and accretion. Paradoxically, the SF rate is highly insensitive to the assumed SF law. This can be understood in terms of self-regulation: if the SF efficiency is changed, then galaxies adjust their gas fractions so as to achieve the same rate of production of massive stars. Self-regulated feedback from accreting black holes is required to match the steep decline in the observed SF rate below redshift two, although more extreme feedback from SF, for example in the form of a top-heavy IMF at high gas pressures, can help.
We present a linear clustering model of cosmic infrared background (CIB) anisotropies at large scales that is used to measure the cosmic star formation rate density up to redshift 6, the effective bias of the CIB and the mass of dark-matter halos hosting dusty star-forming galaxies. This is achieved using the Planck CIB auto- and cross-power spectra (between different frequencies) and CIBxCMB lensing cross-spectra measurements, as well as external constraints (e.g. on the CIB mean brightness). We recovered an obscured star formation history which agrees well with the values derived from infrared deep surveys and we confirm that the obscured star formation dominates the unobscured one up to at least z=4. The obscured and unobscured star formation rate densities are compatible at $1sigma$ at z=5. We also determined the evolution of the effective bias of the galaxies emitting the CIB and found a rapid increase from $sim$0.8 at z$=$0 to $sim$8 at z$=$4. At 2$<$z$<$4, this effective bias is similar to that of galaxies at the knee of the mass functions and submillimeter galaxies. This effective bias is the weighted average of the true bias with the corresponding emissivity of the galaxies. The halo mass corresponding to this bias is thus not exactly the mass contributing the most to the star formation density. Correcting for this, we obtained a value of log(M$_h$/M$_{odot}$)=12.77$_{-0.125}^{+0.128}$ for the mass of the typical dark matter halo contributing to the CIB at z=2. Finally, we also computed using a Fisher matrix analysis how the uncertainties on the cosmological parameters affect the recovered CIB model parameters and find that the effect is negligible.
[abridged] We study the resolved stellar populations and derive the SFH of the SDIG, a gas-rich dwarf galaxy member of the NGC7793 subgroup in the Sculptor group. We construct a CMD using archival HST observations and examine its stellar content. We derive its SFH using a maximum-likelihood fit to the CMD. The CMD shows that SDIG contains stars from 10Myr to several Gyr old, as revealed from the MS, BL, luminous AGB, and RGB stars. The young stars with ages less than ~250Myr show a spatial distribution confined to its central regions, and additionally the young MS stars exhibit an off-center density peak. The intermediate-age and older stars are more spatially extended. SDIG is dominated by intermediate-age stars with an average age of 6.4Gyr. The average metallicity inferred is [M/H]approx -1.5dex. Its SFH is consistent with a constant SFR, except for ages younger than ~200Myr. The lifetime average SFR is 1.3x10^{-3} Mo/yr. More recently than 100Myr, there has been a burst of SF at a rate ~2-3 times higher than the average SFR. The inferred recent SFR from CMD modelling is higher than inferred from the Ha flux of the galaxy; we interpret this to mean that the upper end of the IMF is not being fully sampled due to the low SFR. Additionally, an observed lack of bright blue stars in the CMD could indicate a downturn in SFR on 10^7-yr timescales. A previous SF enhancement appears to have occurred between 600-1100Myr ago, with amplitude similar to the most recent 100Myr. Older bursts of similar peak SFR and duration would not be resolvable with these data. The observed enhancements in SF suggest that SDIG is able to sustain a complex SFH without the effect of interactions with its nearest massive galaxy. Integrating the SFR over the entire history of SDIG yields a total stellar mass 1.77x10^{7}Mo, and a current V-band stellar mass-to-light ratio 3.2Mo/Lo.
We study the radial structure of the stellar mass surface density ($mu$) and stellar population age as a function of the total stellar mass and morphology for a sample of 107 galaxies from the CALIFA survey. We use the fossil record to recover the star formation history (SFH) in spheroidal and disk dominated galaxies with masses from 10$^9$ to 10$^{12}$ M$_odot$. We derive the half mass radius, and we find that galaxies are on average 15% more compact in mass than in light. HMR/HLR decreases with increasing mass for disk galaxies, but is almost constant in spheroidal galaxies. We find that the galaxy-averaged stellar population age, stellar extinction, and $mu$ are well represented by their values at 1 HLR. Negative radial gradients of the stellar population ages support an inside-out formation. The larger inner age gradients occur in the most massive disk galaxies that have the most prominent bulges; shallower age gradients are obtained in spheroids of similar mass. Disk and spheroidal galaxies show negative $mu$ gradients that steepen with stellar mass. In spheroidal galaxies $mu$ saturates at a critical value that is independent of the galaxy mass. Thus, all the massive spheroidal galaxies have similar local $mu$ at the same radius (in HLR units). The SFH of the regions beyond 1 HLR are well correlated with their local $mu$, and follow the same relation as the galaxy-averaged age and $mu$; suggesting that local stellar mass surface density preserves the SFH of disks. The SFH of bulges are, however, more fundamentally related to the total stellar mass, since the radial structure of the stellar age changes with galaxy mass even though all the spheroid dominated galaxies have similar radial structure in $mu$. Thus, galaxy mass is a more fundamental property in spheroidal systems while the local stellar mass surface density is more important in disks.
[Abridged] This paper aims at providing new conservative constraints to the cosmic star-formation history from the empirical modeling of mid- and far-infrared data. We perform a non-parametric inversion of galaxy counts at 15, 24, 70, 160, and 850 microns simultaneously. It is a blind search (no redshift information is required) of all possible evolutions of the infrared luminosity function of galaxies, from which the evolution of the star-formation rate density and its uncertainties are derived. The cosmic infrared background (CIRB) measurements are used a posteriori to tighten the range of solutions. The inversion relies only on two hypotheses: (1) the luminosity function remains smooth both in redshift and luminosity, (2) a set of infrared spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies must be assumed. The range of star-formation histories that we derive is well constrained and consistent with redshift-based measurements from deep surveys. The redshift decompositions of the counts are also recovered successfully. Therefore, multi-wavelength counts and CIRB (both projected observations) alone seem to contain enough information to recover the cosmic star-formation history with quantifiable errors. A peak of the SFRD at z~2 is preferred, although higher redshifts are not excluded. We also find a good consistency between the observed evolution of the stellar mass density and the prediction from our model. Finally, the inability of the inversion to model perfectly and simultaneously all the multi-wavelength infrared counts (especially at 160 microns where an excess is seen around 20 mJ) implies either (i) the existence of a sub-population of colder galaxies, (ii) a larger dispersion of dust temperatures among local galaxies than expected, (iii) or a redshift evolution of the infrared SEDs of galaxies.
We present a revised measurement of the optical extragalactic background light (EBL), based on the contribution of resolved galaxies to the integrated galaxy light (IGL). The cosmic optical background radiation (COB), encodes the light generated by star-formation, and provides a wealth of information about the cosmic star formation history (CSFH). We combine wide and deep galaxy number counts from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey (GAMA) and Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS), along with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive and other deep survey datasets, in 9 multi-wavelength filters to measure the COB in the range from 0.35 micron to 2.2 micron. We derive the luminosity density in each band independently and show good agreement with recent and complementary estimates of the optical-EBL from very high-energy (VHE) experiments. Our error analysis suggests that the IGL and Gamma-ray measurements are now fully consistent to within ~10%, suggesting little need for any additional source of diffuse light beyond the known galaxy population. We use our revised IGL measurements to constrain the cosmic star-formation history, and place amplitude constraints on a number of recent estimates. As a consistency check, we can now demonstrate convincingly, that the CSFH, stellar mass growth, and the optical-EBL provide a fully consistent picture of galaxy evolution. We conclude that the peak of star-formation rate lies in the range 0.066-0.076 Msol/yr/Mpc^3 at a lookback time of 9.1 to 10.9 Gyrs.