A study of the HI gas fractions of galaxies at z ~ 1

TL;DR

This study estimates HI gas content in galaxies at z ~ 1 using a photometric proxy, revealing that high-redshift galaxies have significantly higher neutral gas fractions and that HI content is linked to cosmological accretion rather than star formation.

Contribution

Introduces a photometric estimator for HI-to-stellar mass ratio at z ~ 1 and applies it to a large galaxy sample, providing new insights into HI evolution and gas content at high redshift.

Findings

High-mass end of high-z HI mass function similar to local universe

Massive star-forming galaxies do not dominate neutral gas at z ~ 1

HI gas fractions are 3-4 times higher at M_* = 10^{11} M_solar compared to today

Abstract

Due to the fact that HI mass measurements are not available for large galaxy samples at high redshifts, we apply a photometric estimator of the HI-to-stellar mass ratio (M_HI/M_*) calibrated using a local Universe sample of galaxies to a sample of galaxies at z ~ 1 in the DEEP2 survey. We use these HI mass estimates to calculate HI mass functions (HIMFs) and cosmic HI mass densities (Omega_HI), and to examine the correlation between star formation rate and HI gas content, for galaxies at z ~ 1. We have estimated HI gas masses for ~ 7,000 galaxies in the DEEP2 survey with redshifts in the range 0.75 < z < 1.4 and stellar masses M_* > 10^{10} M_solar, using a combination of the rest-frame ultraviolet-optical colour (NUV - r) and stellar mass density (mu_*) as a way to estimate M_HI/M_*. It is found that the high mass end of high-z HI mass function (HIMF) is quite similar to that of the local HIMF. The lower limit of Omega_HI,limit = 2.1 * 10^{-4} h_70^{-1}, obtained by directly integrating the HI mass of galaxies with M_* > 10^{10} M_solar, confirms that massive star-forming galaxies do not dominate the neutral gas at z ~ 1. We study the evolution of the HI mass to stellar mass ratio from z ~ 1 to today and find a steeper relation between HI gas mass fraction and stellar mass at higher redshifts. Specifically, galaxies with M_* = 10^{11} M_solar at z ~ 1 are found to have 3 - 4 times higher neutral gas fractions than local galaxies, while the increase is as high as 4 - 12 times at M_* = 10^{10} M_solar. The quantity M_HI/SFR exhibits very large scatter, and the scatter increases from a factor of 5 - 7 at z = 0 to factors close to a hundred at z = 1. This implies that there is no relation between HI gas and star formation in high redshift galaxies. The HI gas must be linked to cosmological gas accretion processes at high redshifts.