ZFOURGE/CANDELS: ON THE EVOLUTION OF M* GALAXY PROGENITORS FROM z = 3 TO 0.5
- George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A and M University, College Station, TX 77843-4242 (United States)
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden (Netherlands)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
- Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, VIC 3122 (Australia)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109 (Australia)
- University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town 7535 (South Africa)
- Center of Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904 (Israel)
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States)
Galaxies with stellar masses near M* contain the majority of stellar mass in the universe, and are therefore of special interest in the study of galaxy evolution. The Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) have present-day stellar masses near M*, at 5 × 10{sup 10} M {sub ☉} (defined here to be MW-mass) and 10{sup 11} M {sub ☉} (defined to be M31-mass). We study the typical progenitors of these galaxies using the FOURSTAR Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE). ZFOURGE is a deep medium-band near-IR imaging survey, which is sensitive to the progenitors of these galaxies out to z ∼ 3. We use abundance-matching techniques to identify the main progenitors of these galaxies at higher redshifts. We measure the evolution in the stellar mass, rest-frame colors, morphologies, far-IR luminosities, and star formation rates, combining our deep multiwavelength imaging with near-IR Hubble Space Telescope imaging from Cosmic Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), and Spitzer and Herschel far-IR imaging from Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-Herschel and CANDELS-Herschel. The typical MW-mass and M31-mass progenitors passed through the same evolution stages, evolving from blue, star-forming disk galaxies at the earliest stages to redder dust-obscured IR-luminous galaxies in intermediate stages and to red, more quiescent galaxies at their latest stages. The progenitors of the MW-mass galaxies reached each evolutionary stage at later times (lower redshifts) and with stellar masses that are a factor of two to three lower than the progenitors of the M31-mass galaxies. The process driving this evolution, including the suppression of star formation in present-day M* galaxies, requires an evolving stellar-mass/halo-mass ratio and/or evolving halo-mass threshold for quiescent galaxies. The effective size and SFRs imply that the baryonic cold-gas fractions drop as galaxies evolve from high redshift to z ∼ 0 and are strongly anticorrelated with an increase in the Sérsic index. Therefore, the growth of galaxy bulges in M* galaxies corresponds to a rapid decline in the galaxy gas fractions and/or a decrease in the star formation efficiency.
- OSTI ID:
- 22521990
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 803, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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