The role of stellar mass in the cosmic history of star formation as seen by Herschel and ALMA

¹ Université Paris Cité, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, AIM, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Chemin Pegasi 51 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
³ NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author; lucas.a.leroy@gmail.com

Received: 20 October 2023
Accepted: 27 September 2024

Abstract

Aims. We explore the contribution of galaxies, as a function of their stellar mass, to the cosmic star formation history (CSFH). In order to avoid uncertain extrapolations of the infrared luminosity function, which is often polluted by the contribution of starbursts, we base our analysis on stellar mass. Attenuation by dust is accounted for thanks to the combination of deep surveys by Herschel and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA).

Methods. We combined for the first time the deepest Herschel (GOODS-South, GOODS-North, COSMOS and UDS) and ALMA (GOODS-South) surveys. We constrained the star formation rate (SFR), dust mass (M_dust), dust temperature (T_dust) and gas mass (M_gas) of galaxies as a function of their stellar mass (M_⋆) from z ∼ 5 to z ∼ 0 by performing a stacking analysis of over 128 000 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) H-band selected galaxies. We studied the evolution of the star formation efficiency of galaxies as a function of redshift and M_⋆.

Results. We show that the addition of ALMA to Herschel allows us to reach lower M_⋆ and higher redshifts. We confirm that the SFR-M_⋆ star formation main sequence (MS) follows a linear evolution with a slope close to unity with a bending at the high-mass end at z <  2. The mean T_dust of MS galaxies evolves linearly with redshift, with no apparent correlation with M_⋆. We show that, up to z ∼ 5, massive galaxies (i.e. M_⋆ ≥ 10¹⁰ M_⊙) account for most of the total SFR density (ρ_SFR), while the contribution of lower-mass galaxies (i.e. M_⋆ ≤ 10¹⁰ M_⊙) is rather constant. We compare the evolution of star-forming galaxy (SFGs) to the cosmological simulation TNG100. We find that TNG100 exhibits a noticeable difference in the evolution of the CSFH, that is, the marked evolution of massive galaxies found in the observations appears to be smoothed in the simulation, possibly due to feedback that is too efficient. In this mass complete analysis, H-dropout (also called HST-dark) galaxies account for ∼23% of the CSFH in massive galaxies at z >  3. Finally, we find hints that the star formation efficiency of distant galaxies (z = 3–5) is stronger (shorter depletion time) as compared to low-redshift galaxies.