No Arabic abstract
We use deep Herschel PACS and SPIRE observations in GOODSS, GOODSN and COSMOS to estimate the average dust mass (Mdust) of galaxies on a redshift-stellar mass (Mstar)-SFR grid. We study the scaling relations between Mdust, Mstar and SFR at z<=2.5. No clear evolution of Mdust is observed at fixed SFR and Mstar. We find a tight correlation between SFR and Mdust, likely a consequence of the Schmidt-Kennicutt (S-K) law. The Mstar-Mdust correlation observed by previous works flattens or sometimes disappears when fixing the SFR. Most of it likely derives from the combination of the Mdust-SFR and Mstar-SFR correlations. We then investigate the gas content as inferred by converting Mdust by assuming that the dust/gas ratio scales linearly with the gas metallicity. All galaxies in the sample follow, within uncertainties, the same SFR-Mgas relation (integrated S-K law), which broadly agrees with CO-based results for the bulk of the population, despite the completely different approaches. The majority of galaxies at z~2 form stars with an efficiency (SFE=SFR/Mgas) ~5 times higher than at z~0. It is not clear what fraction of such variation is an intrinsic redshift evolution and what fraction arises from selection effects. The gas fraction (fgas) decreases with Mstar and increases with SFR, and does not evolve with z at fixed Mstar and SFR. We explain these trends by introducing a universal relation between fgas, Mstar and SFR, non-evolving out to z~2.5. Galaxies move across this relation as their gas content evolves in time. We use the 3D fundamental fgas-Mstar-SFR relation and the redshift evolution of the Main Sequence to estimate the evolution of fgas in the average population of galaxies as a function of z and Mstar, and we find evidence a downsizing scenario.
We present an analysis of the neutral hydrogen (HI) properties of a fully cosmological hydrodynamical dwarf galaxy, run with varying simulation parameters. As reported by Governato et al. (2010), the high resolution, high star formation density threshold version of this galaxy is the first simulation to result in the successful reproduction of a (dwarf) spiral galaxy without any associated stellar bulge. We have set out to compare in detail the HI distribution and kinematics of this simulated bulgeless disk with what is observed in a sample of nearby dwarfs. To do so, we extracted the radial gas density profiles, velocity dispersion (e.g., velocity ellipsoid, turbulence), and the power spectrum of structure within the cold interstellar medium from the simulations. The highest resolution dwarf, when using a high density star formation threshold comparable to densities of giant molecular clouds, possesses bulk characteristics consistent with those observed in nature, though the cold gas is not as radially extended as that observed in nearby dwarfs, resulting in somewhat excessive surface densities. The lines-of-sight velocity dispersion radial profiles have values that are in good agreement with observed dwarf galaxies, but due to the fact that only the streaming velocities of particles are tracked, a correction to include the thermal velocities can lead to profiles that are quite flat. The ISM power spectra of the simulations appear to possess more power on smaller spatial scales than that of the SMC. We conclude that unavoidable limitations remain due to the unresolved physics of star formation and feedback within pc-scale molecular clouds.
We study the evolution of the cold gas content of galaxies by splitting the interstellar medium into its atomic and molecular hydrogen components, using the galaxy formation model GALFORM in the LCDM framework. We calculate the molecular-to-atomic hydrogen mass ratio, H2/HI, in each galaxy using two different approaches; the pressure-based empirical relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky and the theoretical model of Krumholz, McKeee & Tumlinson, and apply them to consistently calculate the star formation rates of galaxies. We find that the model based on the Blitz & Rosolowsky law predicts an HI mass function, CO(1-0) luminosity function, correlations between the H2/HI ratio and stellar and cold gas mass, and infrared-CO luminosity relation in good agreement with local and high redshift observations. The HI mass function evolves weakly with redshift, with the number density of high mass galaxies decreasing with increasing redshift. In the case of the H2 mass function, the number density of massive galaxies increases strongly from z=0 to z=2, followed by weak evolution up to z=4. We also find that the H2/HI ratio of galaxies is strongly dependent on stellar and cold gas mass, and also on redshift. The slopes of the correlations between H2/HI and stellar and cold gas mass hardly evolve, but the normalisation increases by up to two orders of magnitude from z=0-8. The strong evolution in the H2 mass function and the H2/HI ratio is primarily due to the evolution in the sizes of galaxies and secondarily, in the gas fractions. The predicted cosmic density evolution of HI agrees with the observed evolution inferred from DLAs, and is dominated by low/intermediate mass halos. We find that previous theoretical studies have largely overestimated the redshift evolution of the global H2/HI ratio due to limited resolution. We predict a maximum of rho_H2/rho_HI~1.2 at z~3.5.
(Abridged) We analyze the evolution of 42 spiral galaxies in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey, using extinction-corrected UV, optical and near-infrared radial profiles to probe the emission of stars of different ages as a function of radius. We fit these profiles with models that describe the chemical and spectro-photometric evolution of spiral disks within a self-consistent framework. These backward models succesfully reproduce the multi-wavelength profiles of our galaxies, except the UV profiles of some early-type disks. From the model fitting we infer the maximum circular velocity of the rotation curve (Vc) and the dimensionless spin parameter (lambda). The values of Vc are in good agreement with the velocities measured in HI rotation curves. While our sample is not volume-limited, the resulting distribution of spins is close to the lognormal function obtained in cosmological N-body simulations, peaking at ~0.03 regardless of the total halo mass. We do not find any evident trend between spin and Hubble type, besides an increase in the scatter for the latest types. According to the model, galaxies evolve along a roughly constant mass-size relation, increasing their scale-lengths as they become more massive. The radial scale-length of most disks in our sample seems to have increased at a rate of 0.05-0.06 kpc/Gyr, being now 20-25% larger than at z=1.
We have carried out a survey for 12CO J=1-0 and J=2-1 emission in the 260 early-type galaxies of the volume-limited Atlas3D sample, with the goal of connecting their star formation and assembly histories to their cold gas content. This is the largest volume-limited CO survey of its kind and is the first to include many Virgo Cluster members. Sample members are dynamically hot galaxies with a median stellar mass 3times 10^{10} Msun; they are selected by morphology rather than colour, and the bulk of them lie on the red sequence. The overall CO detection rate is 56/259 = 0.22 error 0.03, with no dependence on K luminosity and only a modest dependence on dynamical mass. There are a dozen CO detections among the Virgo Cluster members; statistical analysis of their H_2 mass distributions and their dynamical status within the cluster shows that the clusters influence on their molecular masses is subtle at best, even though (unlike spirals) they seem to be virialized within the cluster. We suggest that the cluster members have retained their molecular gas through several Gyr residences in the cluster. There are also a few extremely CO-rich early-type galaxies with H_2 masses >= 10^9 Msun, and these are in low density environments. We do find a significant trend between molecular content and the stellar specific angular momentum. The galaxies of low angular momentum also have low CO detection rates, suggesting that their formation processes were more effective at destroying molecular gas or preventing its re-accretion. We speculate on the implications of these data for the formation of various sub-classes of early-type galaxies.
We use dust masses ($M_{dust}$) derived from far-infrared data and molecular gas masses ($M_{mol}$) based on CO luminosity, to calibrate proxies based on a combination of the galaxy Balmer decrement, disk inclination and gas metallicity. We use such proxies to estimate $M_{dust}$ and $M_{mol}$ in the local SDSS sample of star-forming galaxies (SFGs). We study the distribution of $M_{dust}$ and $M_{mol}$ along and across the Main Sequence (MS) of SFGs. We find that $M_{dust}$ and $M_{mol}$ increase rapidly along the MS with increasing stellar mass ($M_*$), and more marginally across the MS with increasing SFR (or distance from the relation). The dependence on $M_*$ is sub-linear for both $M_{dust}$ and $M_{mol}$. Thus, the fraction of dust ($f_{dust}$) and molecular gas mass ($f_{mol}$) decreases monotonically towards large $M_*$. The star formation efficiency (SFE, the inverse of the molecular gas depletion time) depends strongly on the distance from the MS and it is constant along the MS. As nearly all galaxies in the sample are central galaxies, we estimate the dependence of $f_{dust}$ and $f_{gas}$ on the host halo mass and find a tight anti-correlation. As the region where the MS is bending is numerically dominated by massive halos, we conclude that the bending of the MS is due to lower availability of molecular gas mass in massive halos rather than a lower efficiency in forming stars.