The history of star-forming galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

This paper, the sixth in the Semi-Empirical Analysis of Galaxies series, studies the evolution of 82 302 star-forming (SF) galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Star formation histories (SFHs) are derived from detailed spectral fits obtained with our publicly available spectral synthesis code starlight. Our main goals are to explore new ways to derive SFHs from the synthesis results and apply them to investigate how SFHs vary as a function of nebular metallicity (Zneb). A number of refinements over our previous work are introduced, including (1) an improved selection criterion; (2) a careful examination of systematic residuals around Hβ; (3) self-consistent determination of nebular extinctions and metallicities; (4) tests with several Zneb estimators; (5) a study of the effects of the reddening law adopted and of the relation between nebular and stellar extinctions and the interstellar component of the Na i D doublet. Our main achievements may be summarized as follows. (1) A conventional correlation analysis is performed to study how global properties relate to Zneb, leading to the confirmation of previously known relations, such as those between Z neb and galaxy luminosity, mass, dust content, mean stellar metallicity and mean stellar age. (2) A simple formalism which compresses the results of the synthesis while at the same time yielding time-dependent star formation rates (SFR) and mass assembly histories is presented. (3) A comparison of the current SFR derived from the population synthesis with that obtained from Hα shows that these independent estimators agree very well, with a scatter of a factor of 2. An important corollary of this finding is that we now have a way to estimate SFR in galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei, where the Hα method cannot be applied. (4) Fully time-dependent SFHs were derived for all galaxies, and then averaged over six Zneb bins spanning the entire SF wing in the diagram. (5) We find that SFHs vary systematically along the SF sequence. Though all SF galaxies formed the bulk of their stellar mass over 1 Gyr ago, low-Zneb systems evolve at a slower pace and are currently forming stars at a much higher relative rate. Galaxies at the tip of the SF wing have current specific SFRs about two orders of magnitude larger than the metal-rich galaxies at its bottom. (6) At any given time, the distribution of specific SFRs for galaxies within a Zneb bin is broad and approximately lognormal. (7) The whole study was repeated grouping galaxies within bins of stellar mass and surface mass density, both of which are more fundamental drivers of SFH. Given the existence of strong Zneb - M* - Σ* relations, the overall picture described above remains valid. Thus, low-M* (low-Σ*) systems are the ones which evolve slower, with current specific SFRs much larger than more massive (dense) galaxies. (8) This overall pattern of SFHs as a function of Zneb, M* or Σ* is robust against changes in selection criteria, choice of evolutionary synthesis models for the spectral fits, and differential extinction effects. © 2007 RAS.