The Evolution of the SFR-M_* relation at 0.1<z<4: Environmental and Morphological Dependencies

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study of the relationship between star formation rate (SFR) and stellar mass (M_*) from z = 0.1 to z = 4 using a mass-complete sample of approximately 290,000 galaxies from the COSMOS2020 catalog. We find that the SFR-M_* relation exhibits a pronounced high-mass decline that becomes increasingly evident at lower redshifts. Examining environmental and morphological dependencies, we find strikingly different patterns. For all galaxies, we find galaxies in high-density environments exhibit suppressed star formation rates at z < 1 especially at high-mass end, while for star-forming galaxies no apparent environmental effect is found at all redshifts. In contrast, galaxy morphology exerts strong influence on the SFR-M_* relation at z < 2, in a sense that early-type galaxies exhibit systematically lower star formation rates at fixed mass compared to spirals and irregulars, with this trend persisting even within the star-forming population. These results suggest that internal structural properties (bulge components in particular) continuously regulate star formation efficiency independently of whether galaxies are classified as active or quiescent, whereas external environmental processes primarily serve as rapid quenching mechanisms that increase the fraction of quiescent galaxies at low redshifts. We attribute the observed high-mass decline of the SFR-M_* relation to COSMOS2020's superior capability for detecting massive star-forming galaxies undergoing "morphological quenching" processes.

14 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (46)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) -- Overview
• Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z=1.1 : The Dominance of Gradually Declining Star Formation, and the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies
• A Highly Consistent Framework for the Evolution of the Star-Forming "Main Sequence" from z~0-6
• Bayes in the sky: Bayesian inference and model selection in cosmology
• Constraining the Low-Mass Slope of the Star Formation Sequence at 0.5<z<2.5
• The Herschel view of the dominant mode of galaxy growth from z=4 to the present day
• Combined CO & Dust Scaling Relations of Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions with Cosmic Time, Specific Star Formation Rate and Stellar Mass
• COSMOS2020: A panchromatic view of the Universe to $z\sim 10$ from two complementary catalogs
• Weak Gravitational Lensing with COSMOS: Galaxy Selection and Shape Measurements
• The Main Sequence of star-forming galaxies across cosmic times
• The Relation Between SFR and Stellar Mass for Galaxies at 3.5 $\le z\le$ 6.5 in CANDELS
• Bulge mass is king: The dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Turnover in the Galaxy Main Sequence of Star Formation at $M_{\ast }\sim 10^{10}{M}_{\odot }$ for Redshifts $z<1.3$
• COSMOS2020: The Galaxy Stellar Mass Function: the assembly and star formation cessation of galaxies at $0.2<z\le 7.5$
• Morphology and star formation in IllustrisTNG: the build-up of spheroids and discs
• The VLA-COSMOS 3 GHz Large Project: Evolution of specific star formation rates out to $z\sim 5$
• Dusty Starbursts Masquerading as Ultra-high Redshift Galaxies in JWST CEERS Observations
• A New Census of the 0.2< z <3.0 Universe, Part II: The Star-Forming Sequence
• The main sequence of star forming galaxies I. The local relation and its bending
• Stochastic modeling of star-formation histories I: the scatter of the star-forming main sequence
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Effects of Morphology in the global and local Star Formation Main Sequences
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: VIII. When Did Early-type Galaxies Form?
• MAHALO Deep Cluster Survey I. Accelerated and enhanced galaxy formation in the densest regions of a protocluster at z=2.5
• Euclid preparation: XVIII. Cosmic Dawn Survey. Spitzer observations of the Euclid deep fields and calibration fields
• A systematic search for very massive galaxies at z > 4
• Illuminating the dark side of cosmic star formation two billion years after the Big Bang
• The star formation activity in cosmic voids
• The Voronoi Tessellation cluster finder in 2+1 dimensions
• Coincidence between morphology and star-formation activity through cosmic time: the impact of the bulge growth
• COSMOS2025: The COSMOS-Web galaxy catalog of photometry, morphology, redshifts, and physical parameters from JWST, HST, and ground-based imaging
• The bending of the star-forming main sequence traces the cold- to hot-accretion transition mass over 0<z<4
• Conditional Quenching: A detailed look at the SFR-Density Relation at z ~ 0.9 from ORELSE
• Accelerated galaxy growth and environmental quenching in a protocluster at z=3.24
• Quenching Timescales in the IllustrisTNG Simulation
• A detailed study of massive galaxies in a protocluster at z=3.13
• Charting the main sequence of star-forming galaxies out to redshifts z<5.7
• Constraining the duration of ram pressure stripping features in the optical from the direction of jellyfish galaxy tails
• Morphology & Environment's Role on the Star Formation Rate -- Stellar Mass Relation in COSMOS from 0 < z < 3.5
• The Fate of the Interstellar Medium in Early-type Galaxies. II. Observational Evidence for Morphological Quenching
• Bulgeless galaxies in the COSMOS field: environment and star formation evolution at $z<1$
• The Local Cluster Survey II: Disk-Dominated Cluster Galaxies with Suppressed Star Formation
• The effect of the morphological quenching mechanism on star formation activity at 0.5 < z < 1.5 in 3D-HST/CANDELS
• A Catalog of Emission-Line Galaxies from the Faint Infrared Grism Survey: Studying Environmental Influence on Star Formation
• Influence of star-forming galaxy selection on the galaxy main sequence
• Going deeper into the dark with COSMOS-Web: JWST unveils the total contribution of Radio-Selected NIRfaint galaxies to the cosmic Star Formation Rate Density