An evolving and mass dependent ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation for galaxies

Abstract

The scatter (${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$) of the specific star formation rates (sSFRs) of galaxies is a measure of the diversity in their star formation histories (SFHs) at a given mass. In this paper we employ the EAGLE simulations to study the dependence of the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$ of galaxies on stellar mass (${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$) through the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation in $\mathrm{z}\sim 0-4$. We find that the relation evolves with time, with the dispersion depending on both stellar mass and redshift. The models point to an evolving U-shape form for the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation with the scatter being minimal at a characteristic mass $M^{\star }$ of $10^{9.5}$ ${\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and increasing both at lower and higher masses. This implication is that the diversity of SFHs increases towards both at the low- and high-mass ends. We find that active galactic nuclei feedback is important for increasing the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$ for high mass objects. On the other hand, we suggest that SNe feedback increases the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$ of galaxies at the low-mass end. We also find that excluding galaxies that have experienced recent mergers does not significantly affect the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation. Furthermore, we employ the combination of the EAGLE simulations with the radiative transfer code SKIRT to evaluate the effect of SFR/stellar mass diagnostics in the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation and find that the $SFR/{\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ methodologies (e.g. SED fitting, UV+IR, UV+IRX-$\beta$) widely used in the literature to obtain intrinsic properties of galaxies have a large effect on the derived shape and normalization of the ${\sigma }_{\text{sSFR}}$-${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ relation.

23 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Stochastic modelling of star-formation histories II: star-formation variability from molecular clouds and gas inflow
• The high redshift SFR-M* relation is sensitive to the employed star formation rate and stellar mass indicators: Towards addressing the tension between observations and simulations
• Infrared luminosity functions and dust mass functions in the EAGLE simulation