Size, shade or shape? The contribution of galaxies of different types to the star-formation history of the Universe from SDSS-IV MaNGA

Thomas Peterken, Alfonso Aragón-Salamanca, Michael Merrifield, Vladimir Avila-Reese, Nicholas F. Boardman, Helena Domínguez Sánchez, Dmitry Bizyaev, Niv Drory, Kaike Pan, Joel R. Brownstein

Published 2021-01-28Version 1

By fitting stellar populations to SDSS-IV MaNGA survey observations of ~7000 suitably-weighted individual galaxies, we reconstruct the star-formation history of the Universe, which we find to be in reasonable agreement with previous studies. Dividing the galaxies by their present-day stellar mass, we demonstrate the downsizing phenomenon, whereby the more massive galaxies hosted the most star-formation at earlier times. Further dividing the galaxy sample by colour and morphology, we find that a galaxy's present-day colour tells us more about its historical contribution to the cosmic star formation history than its current morphology. We show that downsizing effects are greatest among galaxies currently in the blue cloud, but that the level of downsizing in galaxies of different morphologies depends quite sensitively on the morphological classification used, due largely to the difficulty in classifying the smaller low-mass galaxies from their ground-based images. Nevertheless, we find agreement that among galaxies with stellar masses $M_{\star}>6\times10^{9}\,M_{\odot}$, downsizing is most significant in spirals. However, there are complicating factors. For example, for more massive galaxies, we find that colour and morphology are predictors of the past star formation over a longer timescale than in less massive systems. Presumably this effect is reflecting the longer period of evolution required to alter these larger galaxies' physical properties, but shows that conclusions based on any single property don't tell the full story.