Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): linking star formation histories and stellar mass growth

Bauer, A.E.; Hopkins, A.M.; Gunawardhana, M.; Taylor, E.N.; Baldry, I.; Bamford, S.P.; Bland-Hawthorn, J.; Brough, S.; Brown, M.J.I.; Cluver, M.E.; Colless, M.; Conselice, C.J.; Croom, S.; Driver, S.; Foster, C.; Jones, D.H.; Lara-Lopez, M.A.; Liske, J.; López-Sánchez, Á.R.; Loveday, J.; Norberg, P.; Owers, M.S.; Pimbblet, K.; Robotham, A.; Sansom, A.E.; Sharp, R.

Abstract

We present evidence for stochastic star formation histories in low-mass (M* < 1010 M⊙) galaxies from observations within the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. For ∼73 000 galaxies between 0.05 < z < 0.32, we calculate star formation rates (SFR) and specific star formation rates (SSFR = SFR/M*) from spectroscopic Hα measurements and apply dust corrections derived from Balmer decrements. We find a dependence of SSFR on stellar mass, such that SSFRs decrease with increasing stellar mass for star-forming galaxies, and for the full sample, SSFRs decrease as a stronger function of stellar mass. We use simple parametrizations of exponentially declining star formation histories to investigate the dependence on stellar mass of the star formation time-scale and the formation redshift. We find that parametrizations previously fit to samples of z ∼ 1 galaxies cannot recover the distributions of SSFRs and stellar masses observed in the GAMA sample between 0.05 < z < 0.32. In particular, a large number of low-mass (M* < 1010 M⊙) galaxies are observed to have much higher SSFRs than can be explained by these simple models over the redshift range of 0.05 < z < 0.32, even when invoking mass-dependent staged evolution. For such a large number of galaxies to maintain low stellar masses, yet harbour such high SSFRs, requires the late onset of a weak underlying exponentially declining star formation history with stochastic bursts of star formation superimposed.

Citation

Bauer, A., Hopkins, A., Gunawardhana, M., Taylor, E., Baldry, I., Bamford, S., …Sharp, R. (2013). Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): linking star formation histories and stellar mass growth. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 434(1), 209-221. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt1011

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Jun 3, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 30, 2014
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 434
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 209-221
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt1011
• Keywords: Galaxies: evolution, Galaxies: formation, Galaxies: general, Galaxies: starburst, Galaxies: star formation, Galaxies: stellar content.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1460211