First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) VII: The Star Formation and Metal Enrichment Histories of Galaxies in the early Universe

Abstract

The star formation and metal enrichment histories of galaxies - at any epoch - constitute one of the key properties of galaxies, and their measurement is a core aim of observational extragalactic astronomy. The lack of deep rest-frame optical coverage at high-redshift has made robust constraints elusive, but this is now changing thanks to the \emph{James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)}. In preparation for the constraints provided by \emph{JWST} we explore the star formation and metal enrichment histories of galaxies at $z=5-13$ using the First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) suite. Built on the EAGLE model, the unique strategy of FLARES allows us to simulate a wide range of stellar masses (and luminosities) and environments. While we predict significant redshift evolution of average ages and specific star formation rates our core result is a mostly flat relationship of age and specific star formation rate with stellar mass. We also find that galaxies in this epoch predominantly have strongly rising star formation histories, albeit with the magnitude dropping with redshift and stellar mass. In terms of chemical enrichment we predict a strong stellar mass - metallicity relation present at $z=10$ and beyond alongside significant $\alpha$-enhancement. Finally, we find no environmental dependence of the relationship between age, specific star formation rate, or metallicity with stellar mass.

arXiv commentTo be submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

References in corpus (58)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Array Programming with NumPy
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The chemical composition of the Sun
• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics
• Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• Substructures in hydrodynamical cluster simulations
• The physics driving the cosmic star formation history
• Inferring the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with BAGPIPES: Evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms
• Chemical enrichment in cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations
• Stellar Population Inference with Prospector
• On the relation between the Schmidt and Kennicutt-Schmidt star formation laws and its implications for numerical simulations
• Star formation thresholds and galaxy edges: why and where
• How to Measure Galaxy Star Formation Histories II: Nonparametric Models
• Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector: Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129 Galaxies in the Local Universe
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: public release of halo and galaxy catalogues
• Keck Spectroscopy of 3<z<7 Faint Lyman Break Galaxies: The Importance of Nebular Emission in Understanding the Specific Star Formation Rate and Stellar Mass Density
• Two Remarkably Luminous Galaxy Candidates at $z\approx 10-12$ Revealed by JWST
• Chemical yields from low- and intermediate-mass stars: model predictions and basic observational constraints
• Modelling and interpreting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with BEAGLE
• The Evolution of the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function at z= 4-8: A Steepening Low-mass-end Slope with Increasing Redshift
• The Relation Between SFR and Stellar Mass for Galaxies at 3.5 $\le z\le$ 6.5 in CANDELS
• CMasher: Scientific colormaps for making accessible, informative and 'cmashing' plots
• A Library of Theoretical Ultraviolet Spectra of Massive, Hot Stars for Evolutionary Synthesis
• The MOSDEF Survey: The Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relation from $z=0$ to $z\sim 3.3$
• Recovering galaxy star formation and metallicity histories from spectra using VESPA
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Data Release 4 and the z < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions
• The Cluster-EAGLE project: global properties of simulated clusters with resolved galaxies
• On the Stellar Populations of Galaxies at z=9-11: The Growth of Metals and Stellar Mass at Early Times
• The VANDELS survey: the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies at 1.0 < z < 1.3
• High-precision Photometric Redshifts from Spitzer/IRAC: Extreme [3.6]-[4.5] Colors Identify Galaxies in the Redshift Range z~6.6-6.9
• ProSpect: Generating Spectral Energy Distributions with Complex Star Formation and Metallicity Histories
• The [OIII]$+$H$\beta$ Equivalent Width Distribution at z$\simeq$7: Implications for the Contribution of Galaxies to Reionization
• Properties of $z\sim 3-6$ Lyman Break Galaxies. II. Impact of nebular emission at high redshift
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) I: Environmental Dependence of High-Redshift Galaxy Evolution
• Galaxy metallicity scaling relations in the EAGLE simulations
• The Stellar Mass Density at z~6 from Spitzer Imaging of i-drop Galaxies
• A Census of the Bright z=8.5-11 Universe with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes in the CANDELS Fields
• The VANDELS survey: the stellar metallicities of star-forming galaxies at 2.5 < z < 5.0
• The evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function over the last twelve billion years from a combination of ground-based and HST surveys
• A first look at the SMACS0723 JWST ERO: spectroscopic redshifts, stellar masses and star-formation histories
• The ALMA REBELS Survey: Specific Star-Formation Rates in the Reionization Era
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) II: The Photometric Properties of High-Redshift Galaxies
• The NIRVANDELS Survey: a robust detection of $\alpha$-enhancement in star-forming galaxies at $z\simeq 3.4$
• Log-normal star formation histories in simulated and observed galaxies
• Probing Cosmic Dawn : Ages and Star Formation Histories of Candidate $z\ge$9 Galaxies
• The VANDELS survey: the relation between UV continuum slope and stellar metallicity in star-forming galaxies at z~3
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) IV: The size evolution of galaxies at $z\ge 5$
• Evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function: evidence for an increasing $M^{\ast }$ from $z=2$ to the present day
• Theoretical predictions for the effect of nebular emission on the broad band photometry of high-redshift galaxies
• Nebular Line Emission During the Epoch of Reionization

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Identification and properties of intense star-forming galaxies at redshifts z>10
• Evolution of the UV LF from z~15 to z~8 Using New JWST NIRCam Medium-Band Observations over the HUDF/XDF
• Identification of a transition from stochastic to secular star formation around $z=9$ with JWST
• A high fraction of close massive binary stars at low metallicity
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) XIII: The Lyman-continuum emission of high-redshift galaxies
• The THESAN-ZOOM project: Population III star formation continues until the end of reionization
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) XII: The consequences of star-dust geometry on galaxies in the EoR
• First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) XVI: Size Evolution of Massive Dusty Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn from UV to IR
• A High-resolution Far-infrared Survey to Probe Black Hole-Galaxy Co-evolution
• The Nature of High-Redshift Massive Quiescent Galaxies -- Searching for RUBIES-UDS-QG-z7 in FLARES