Dust Attenuation, Bulge Formation, and Inside-out Quenching of Star Formation in Star-forming Main Sequence Galaxies at z ∼ 2

S. Tacchella, C. M. Carollo, N. M.Förster Schreiber, A. Renzini, A. Dekel, R. Genzel, P. Lang, S. J. Lilly, C. Mancini, M. Onodera, L. J. Tacconi, S. Wuyts, G. Zamorani

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Abstract

We derive 2D dust attenuation maps at ∼kpc resolution from the UV continuum for 10 galaxies on the z ∼2 star-forming main sequence (SFMS). Comparison with IR data shows that 9 out of 10 galaxies do not require further obscuration in addition to the UV-based correction, though our sample does not include the most heavily obscured, massive galaxies. The individual rest-frame V-band dust attenuation (A V) radial profiles scatter around an average profile that gently decreases from ∼1.8 mag in the center down to ∼0.6 mag at ∼3-4 half-mass radii. We use these maps to correct UV- and Hα-based star formation rates (SFRs), which agree with each other. At masses , the dust-corrected specific SFR (sSFR) profiles are on average radially constant at a mass-doubling timescale of ∼300 Myr, pointing at a synchronous growth of bulge and disk components. At masses , the sSFR profiles are typically centrally suppressed by a factor of ∼10 relative to the galaxy outskirts. With total central obscuration disfavored, this indicates that at least a fraction of massive z ∼2 SFMS galaxies have started their inside-out star formation quenching that will move them to the quenched sequence. In combination with other observations, galaxies above and below the ridge of the SFMS relation have, respectively, centrally enhanced and centrally suppressed sSFRs relative to their outskirts, supporting a picture where bulges are built owing to gas "compaction" that leads to a high central SFR as galaxies move toward the upper envelope of the SFMS.

Original languageEnglish
Article number56
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume859
Issue number1
Early online date20 May 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 May 2018

Funding

We thank the first referee for helping us to improve the discussion of our sample and the second referee for significantly improving the discussion of our results. We thank Marc Rafeski for providing us with his improved dark calibrations for the reduction of the WFC3/UVIS data (Rafelski et al. 2015) and Sandy Faber for inspiring discussions. S.T. also thanks Jonathan Freundlich, Nicholas Lee, Gabriele Pezzulli, Romain Teyssier, Benny Trakhtenbrot, and Weichen Wang for useful suggestions. We acknowledge generous support by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This work was partly supported by the grants ISF 124/12, I-CORE Program of the PBC/ISF 1829/12, BSF 2014-273, PICS 2015-18, and NSF AST-1405962. This research made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System (ADS), the arXiv.org preprint server, the Python plotting library matplotlib (Hunter 2007), and astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013). Facilities: HST (WFC3, ACS), VLT (SINFONI).

Keywords

  • dust, extinction
  • galaxies: evolution
  • galaxies: fundamental parameters
  • galaxies: high-redshift

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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