The specific star formation rate of high redshift galaxies: the case for two modes of star formation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the evolution of specific star formation rates in high-redshift galaxies, proposing a two-mode star formation model involving merger-triggered bursts and cold accretion regulation, to match observations.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical, stochastic star formation efficiency model that varies with galaxy mergers to explain observed SSFR trends at high redshift.

Findings

High-mass galaxies show higher SSFRs than low-mass ones at z>4.

A merger-based efficiency model reproduces observed SSFR patterns.

High-z low-mass galaxies are likely interacting systems with bursty star formation.

Abstract

We study the specific star formation rate (SSFR) and its evolution at $z\gtsim 4$, in models of galaxy formation, where the star formation is driven by cold accretion flows. We show that constant star formation and feedback efficiencies cannot reproduce the observed trend of SSFR with stellar mass and its observed lack of evolution at $z>4$. Model galaxies with $\log(M_*) \ltsim 9.5$ M$_{\odot}$ show systematically lower specific star formation rates by orders of magnitudes, while massive galaxies with M$_* \gtsim 5 \times 10^{10}$ M$_{\odot}$ have up to an order of magnitude larger SSFRs, compared to recent observations by Stark et al.. To recover these observations we apply an empirical star formation efficiency in galaxies that scales with the host halo velocity dispersion as $\propto 1/\sigma^3$ during galaxy mergers. We find that this modification needs to be of stochastic nature to reproduce the observations, i.e. only applied during mergers and not during accretion driven star formation phases. Our choice of star formation efficiency during mergers allows us to capture both, the boost in star formation at low masses and the quenching at high masses, and at the same time produce a constant SSFR-stellar mass relation at $z\gtsim 4$ under the assumption that most of the observed galaxies are in a merger triggered star formation phase. Our results suggest that observed high-z low mass galaxies with high SSFRs are likely to be frequently interacting systems, which experienced bursts in their star formation rate and efficiency (mode 1), in contrast to low redshift $z \ltsim 3$ galaxies which are cold accretion-regulated star forming systems with lower star formation efficiencies (mode 2).