The relationship between star formation rates, local density and stellar mass up to z ~ 3 in the GOODS NICMOS Survey

TL;DR

This study explores how star formation rates in galaxies up to redshift 3 relate to local density and stellar mass, revealing mass dependence and environmental effects mainly at high densities, with potential quenching due to galaxy merging.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the relationship between star formation, local environment, and stellar mass at high redshifts using deep HST imaging and a novel local density measurement approach.

Findings

Star formation strongly depends on stellar mass across all redshifts.

Average star formation rates are largely unaffected by local environment except in high-density regions.

Galaxies with close neighbors show reduced star formation, suggesting merging-induced quenching.

Abstract

We investigate the relation between star formation rates and local galaxy environment for a stellar mass selected galaxy sample in the redshift range 1.5 < z < 3. We use near-infra-red imaging from an extremely deep Hubble Space Telescope survey, the GOODS-NICMOS Survey (GNS) to measure local galaxy densities based on the nearest neighbour approach, while star-formation rates are estimated from rest-frame UV-fluxes. Due to our imaging depth we can examine galaxies down to a colour-independent stellar mass completeness limit of log M\ast = 9.5 M\odot at z ~ 3. We find a strong dependence of star formation activity on galaxy stellar mass over the whole redshift range, which does not depend on local environment. The average star formation rates are largely independent of local environment apart from in the highest relative over-densities. Galaxies in over-densities of a factor of > 5 have on average lower star formation rates by a factor of 2 - 3, but only up to redshifts of z ~ 2. We do not see any evidence for AGN activity influencing these relations. We also investigate the influence of the very local environment on star-formation activity by counting neighbours within 30 kpc radius. This shows that galaxies with two or more close neighbours have on average significantly lower star formation rates as well as lower specific star formation rates up to z ~ 2.5. We suggest that this might be due to star formation quenching induced by galaxy merging processes.