Observational evidence of a slow downfall of star formation efficiency in massive galaxies during the last 10 Gyr

TL;DR

This study provides observational evidence that star formation efficiency in massive galaxies has gradually decreased over the last 10 billion years, impacting their star formation history and evolution.

Contribution

It presents the first measurement of the SFR-Mdisk relation at z=1 and links the decline in star formation efficiency to galaxy mass over cosmic time.

Findings

Star formation efficiency decreases in massive galaxies since z=1.

The decline is due to lower efficiency, not gas content.

The trend is linked to the dominance of atomic gas at low masses.

Abstract

In this paper we study the causes of the reported mass-dependence of the slope of SFR-M* relation, the so-called "Main Sequence" of star-forming galaxies, and discuss its implication on the physical processes that shaped the star formation history of massive galaxies over cosmic time. We use the CANDELS near-IR imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope to perform the bulge-to-disk decomposition of distant galaxies and measure for the first time the slope of the SFR-Mdisk relation at z=1. We find that this relation follows very closely the shape of the SFR-M* correlation, still with a pronounced flattening at the high-mass end. This is clearly excluding, at least at z=1, the secular growth of quiescent bulges in star-forming galaxies as the main driver for the change of slope of the Main Sequence. Then, by stacking the Herschel data available in the CANDELS field, we estimate the total gas mass and the star formation efficiency at different positions on the SFR-M* relation. We find that the relatively low SFRs observed in massive galaxies (M* > 5e10 Msun) are caused by a decreased star formation efficiency, by up to a factor of 3 as compared to lower stellar mass galaxies, and not by a reduced gas content. The trend at the lowest masses is likely linked to the dominance of atomic over molecular gas. We argue that this stellar-mass-dependent SFE can explain the varying slope of the Main Sequence since z=1.5, hence over 70% of the Hubble time. The drop of SFE occurs at lower masses in the local Universe (M* > 2e10 Msun) and is not present at z=2. Altogether this provides evidence for a slow downfall of the star formation efficiency in massive Main Sequence galaxies. The resulting loss of star formation is found to be rising starting from z=2 to reach a level comparable to the mass growth of the quiescent population by z=1. We finally discuss the possible physical origin of this phenomenon.