Baryonic Conversion Tree: The global assembly of stars and dark matter in galaxies from the SDSS

Abstract

Using the spectroscopic sample of the SDSS DR1 we measure how gas was transformed into stars as a function of time and stellar mass: the baryonic conversion tree (BCT). There is a clear correlation between early star formation activity and present-day stellar mass: the more massive galaxies have formed about 80% of their stars at $z>1$, while for the less massive ones the value is only about 20%. By comparing the BCT to the dark matter merger tree, we find indications that star formation efficiency at $z>1$ had to be about a factor of two higher than today ($\sim 10$) in galaxies with present-day stellar mass larger than $2\times 10^{11}{M}_{\odot }$, if this early star formation occurred in the main progenitor. Therefore, the LCDM paradigm can accommodate a large number of red objects. On the other hand, in galaxies with present-day stellar mass less than $10^{11}$ M${}_{\odot }$, efficient star formation seems to have been triggered at $z\sim 0.2$. We show that there is a characteristic mass (M${}_{\ast }\sim 10^{10}$ M${}_{\odot }$) for feedback efficiency (or lack of star formation). For galaxies with masses lower than this, feedback (or star formation suppression) is very efficient while for higher masses it is not. The BCT, determined here for the first time, should be an important observable with which to confront theoretical

arXiv commentReplaced to match accepted version in MNRAS

References in corpus (35)

• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• Large scale bias and the peak background split
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• New Insight on Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Keck Spectroscopy of the Hawaii Deep Fields
• A Quantitative Comparison of SMC, LMC, and Milky Way UV to NIR Extinction Curves
• Concentrations of Dark Halos from their Assembly Histories
• The size distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Stellar IMF from Turbulent Fragmentation
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The power spectrum and the matter content of the universe
• Merger rates in hierarchical models of galaxy formation. II: Comparison with N-body simulations
• Adaptive Refinement Tree - a new high-resolution N-body code for cosmological simulations
• Star Formation Thresholds in Galactic Disks
• The Complete Star Formation History of the Universe
• The Mass Assembly and Star Formation Characteristics of Field Galaxies of Known Morphology
• How to Plant a Merger Tree
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: III. The abundance of massive galaxies 3-6 billion years after the Big Bang
• LBDS 53W091: An Old red Galaxy at z=1.552
• Feedback and the fudamental line of low-luminosity LSB/dwarf galaxies
• Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the CFRS and LDSS redshift surveys II: Structural parameter and the evolution of disk galaxies to z=1
• Evolved Galaxies at z > 1.5 from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey: The Formation Epoch of Massive Stellar Systems
• The Formation of Dust Lanes: Implications for Galaxy Evolution
• Near-IR bright galaxies at z~2. Entering the spheroid formation epoch ?
• Stellar and Dynamical Masses of Ellipticals in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey X: Number Density and Luminosity Function of Field E/S0 Galaxies at z < 1
• Star Formation and Metallicity History of the SDSS galaxy survey: unlocking the fossil record
• Evaluating Semi-Analytic Halo Merging Histories
• Synthetic stellar populations: single stellar populations, stellar interior models and primordial proto-galaxies
• Recovering Physical Parameters from Galaxy Spectra Using MOPED
• F stars, metallicity, and the ages of red galaxies at z > 1
• The abundance of dark galaxies
• Premature dismissal of high-redshift elliptical galaxies
• Formation times and masses of dark matter haloes
• Formation time distribution of dark matter haloes: theories versus N-body simulations
• Old high-redshift galaxies and primordial density fluctuation spectra
• High-z massive galaxies in the HDF-South

Cited by in corpus (48)

• The epochs of early-type galaxy formation as a function of environment
• The ages and metallicities of galaxies in the local universe
• The Mass Assembly History of Field Galaxies: Detection of an Evolving Mass Limit for Star Forming Galaxies
• Galaxy Evolution from Halo Occupation Distribution Modeling of DEEP2 and SDSS Galaxy Clustering
• Natural Downsizing in Hierarchical Galaxy Formation
• Keck Spectroscopy of distant GOODS Spheroidal Galaxies: Downsizing in a Hierarchical Universe
• The Cosmic Evolution of Metallicity from the SDSS Fossil Record
• A census of metals and baryons in stars in the local Universe
• Downsizing by Shutdown in Red Galaxies
• A grid of chemical evolution models as a tool to interpret spiral and irregular galaxies data
• Color and stellar population gradients in galaxies. Correlation with mass
• MOIRCS Deep Survey IV: Evolution of Galaxy Stellar Mass Function Back to z ~ 3
• Mass-to-light ratio gradients in early-type galaxy haloes
• The ages, metallicities and star formation histories of early-type galaxies in SDSS
• Fitting Analysis using Differential Evolution Optimization (FADO): Spectral population synthesis through genetic optimization under self-consistency boundary conditions
• The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey: Tracing the galaxy stellar mass assembly history over the last 8Gyr
• How does galaxy environment matter? The relationship between galaxy environments, colour and stellar mass at 0.4 < z < 1 in the Palomar/DEEP2 survey
• The Galaxy Clustering Crisis in Abundance Matching
• The SCUBA Half-Degree Extragalactic Survey (SHADES) - VIII. The Nature of Faint Submm Galaxies in SHADES, SWIRE and SXDF Surveys
• The GOGREEN survey: Post-infall environmental quenching fails to predict the observed age difference between quiescent field and cluster galaxies at z>1
• Modeling Galactic Conformity with the Color-Halo Age Relation in the Illustris Simulation
• Environment and the cosmic evolution of star formation
• Evolution of Star-formation Properties of High-redshift Cluster Galaxies since $z=2$
• Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies: IV. A nature via nurture scenario for galaxy evolution
• Clustering Properties of restframe UV selected galaxies II: Migration of Star Formation sites with cosmic time from GALEX and CFHTLS
• Simulating the formation and evolution of galaxies: Multi-phase description of the interstellar medium, star formation, and energy feedback
• The IMACS Cluster Building Survey. III. The Star Formation Histories of Field Galaxies
• The stellar populations of the bluest low surface brightness galaxies
• A Physical Model of Lyman Alpha Emitters
• Can galaxy outflows and re-accretion produce the downsizing in specific star formation rate of late-type galaxies?
• Self-consistent population spectral synthesis with FADO - I. The importance of nebular emission in modelling star-forming galaxies
• Investigating the relationship between AGN activity and stellar mass in zCOSMOS galaxies at 0<z<1 using emission line diagnostic diagrams
• The similar stellar populations of quiescent spiral and elliptical galaxies
• Clustering Properties of restframe UV selected galaxies I: the correlation length derived from GALEX data in the local Universe
• MOIRCS Deep Survey. X. Evolution of Quiescent Galaxies as a Function of Stellar Mass at 0.5<z<2.5
• On Iron Enrichment, Star Formation, and Type Ia Supernovae in Galaxy Clusters
• Mass-dependent Color Evolution of Field Galaxies Back to z~3 Over the Wide Range of Stellar Mass
• Chemical and photometric evolution models for disk, irregular and low mass galaxies
• Age and Metallicity of galaxies in different environments of the Coma supercluster
• Astrophysics in 2005
• Subhalo abundance matching using progenitor mass at varying redshift: Two modes of stellar mass growth imprinted into the Subaru HSC galaxy clustering
• Constraints on Galaxy Structure and Evolution from the Light of Nearby Systems
• From Halos to Galaxies. X: Decoding Galaxy SEDs with Physical Priors and Accurate Star Formation History Reconstruction
• Does stellar mass assembly history vary with environment?
• Star-formation Properties of z ~ 1 Galaxy Clusters and Groups from Horizon Run 5
• Evolution of damped Lyman alpha kinematics and the effect of spatial resolution on 21-cm measurements
• Multi-Object Spectroscopy of Galaxy Clusters at $z\sim 0.95$ in Ultra Deep Survey Field with Different Star-formation Properties and Large-scale Environments
• The Molecular ISM of Low Surface Brightness Spiral Galaxies