Duivenvoorden, S, Oliver, S, Buat, V, Darvish, B, Efstathiou, A, Farrah, D, Griffin, M, Hurley, P D, Ibar, E, Jarvis, M, Papadopoulos, A, Sargent, M T, Scott, D, Scudder, J M, Symeonidis, M, Vaccari, M, Viero, M P and Wang, L (2016) HELP: star formation as function of galaxy environment with Herschel. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 462 (1). pp. 277-289. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

The Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP) brings together a vast range of data from many astronomical observatories. Its main focus is on the Herschel data, which maps dust obscured star formation over 1300 deg2. With this unprecedented combination of data sets, it is possible to investigate how the star formation vs stellar mass relation (main-sequence) of star-forming galaxies depends on environment. In this pilot study we explore this question between 0:1 < z < 3:2 using data in the COSMOS field. We estimate the local environment from a smoothed galaxy density field using the full photometric redshift probability distribution. We estimate star formation rates by stacking the SPIRE data from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). Our analysis rules out the hypothesis that the main-sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at 1:5 < z < 2, while a simple model in which the mean specific star formation rate declines with increasing environmental density gives a better description. However, we cannot exclude a simple hypothesis in which the main-sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at z < 1:5 and z > 2. We also estimate the evolution of the star formation rate density in the COSMOS field and our results are consistent with previous measurements at z < 1:5 and z > 2 but we find a 1:4 (superscript) +0:3 (subscript) 0:2 times higher peak value of the star formation rate density at z about 1:9.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Infrared: galaxies, Galaxies: star formation, Galaxies: evolution
Schools and Departments:	School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences > Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QC Physics
Depositing User:	Richard Chambers
Date Deposited:	17 Jun 2016 10:09
Last Modified:	06 Mar 2017 11:25
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/61535

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