• Van Dokkum, Pieter
• Franx, Marijn
• Nelson, Erica J.
• Whitaker, Katherine E.
• Johnson, Benjamin D.
• Conroy, Charlie
• Speagle, Joshua S.
• Leja, Joel

Abstract

We use the panchromatic spectral energy distribution (SED)-fitting code Prospector to measure the galaxy logM*-logSFR relationship (the star-forming sequence) across 0.2 &lt; z &lt; 3.0 using the COSMOS-2015 and 3D-HST UV-IR photometric catalogs. We demonstrate that the chosen method of identifying star-forming galaxies introduces a systematic uncertainty in the inferred normalization and width of the star-forming sequence, peaking for massive galaxies at ~0.5 and ~0.2 dex, respectively. To avoid this systematic, we instead parameterize the density of the full galaxy population in the logM*-logSFR-redshift plane using a flexible neural network known as a normalizing flow. The resulting star-forming sequence has a low-mass slope near unity and a much flatter slope at higher masses, with a normalization 0.2-0.5 dex lower than typical inferences in the literature. We show this difference is due to the sophistication of the Prospector stellar populations modeling: the nonparametric star formation histories naturally produce higher masses while the combination of individualized metallicity, dust, and star formation history constraints produce lower star formation rates (SFRs) than typical UV+IR formulae. We introduce a simple formalism to understand the difference between SFRs inferred from SED fitting and standard template-based approaches such as UV+IR SFRs. Finally, we demonstrate the inferred star-forming sequence is consistent with predictions from theoretical models of galaxy formation, resolving a long-standing ~ 0.2-0.5 dex offset with observations at 0.5 &lt; z &lt; 3. The fully trained normalizing flow including a nonparametric description of $ ({log}{M}^{* },{logSFR},z)$ is available online <SUP>20</SUP> <SUP>20</SUP> https://github.com/jrleja/sfs_leja_trained_flow to facilitate straightforward comparisons with future work....

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• forming
• normalizing