The Impact of Starbursts on the Circumgalactic Medium

We present a study exploring the impact of a starburst on the properties of the surrounding circum-galactic medium (CGM): gas located beyond the galaxy's stellar body and extending out to the virial radius (200 kpc). We obtained ultraviolet spectroscopic data from the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph (COS) probing the CGM of 20 low-redshift foreground galaxies using background QSOs. Our sample consists of starburst and control galaxies. The latter comprises normal star-forming and passive galaxies with similar stellar masses and impact parameters as the starbursts. We used optical spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS) to estimate the properties of the starbursts, inferring average ages of 200 Myrs and burst fractions involving ~10% of their stellar mass. The COS data reveal highly ionized gas traced by CIV in 80%(4/5) of the starburst and in 17%(2/12) of the control sample. The two control galaxies with CIV absorbers differed from the four starbursts in showing multiple low-ionization transitions and strong saturated Lyman-alpha lines. They therefore appear to be physically different systems. We show that the CIV absorbers in the starburst CGM represent a significant baryon repository. The high detection rate of this highly ionized material in the starbursts suggests that starburst-driven winds can affect the CGM out to radii as large as 200 kpc. This is plausible given the inferred properties of the starbursts and the known properties of starburst-driven winds. This would represent the first direct observational evidence of local starbursts impacting the bulk of their gaseous halos, and as such provides new evidence of the importance of this kind of feedback in the evolution of galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS)

The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS) is a large targeted survey that started at Arecibo in March 2008. GASS is designed to measure the neutral hydrogen content of ~1000 massive galaxies (with stellar mass Mstar > 10^10 Msun) at redshift 0.025<z<0.05, uniformly selected from the SDSS spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys. Our selected mass range straddles the recently identified "transition mass" (Mstar ~3x10^10 Msun) above which galaxies show a marked decrease in their present to past-averaged star formation rates. GASS will produce the first statistically significant sample of massive "transition" galaxies with homogeneously measured stellar masses, star formation rates and gas properties. The analysis of this sample will allow us to investigate if and how the cold gas responds to a variety of different physical conditions in the galaxy, thus yielding insights on the physical processes responsible for the transition between blue, star-forming and red, passively evolving galaxies. GASS will be of considerably legacy value not only in isolation but also by complementing ongoing HI-selected surveys.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. To appear in proceedings of "The Evolution of Galaxies through the Neutral Hydrogen Window", R. Minchin & E. Momjian eds. Higher resolution version at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/pubs.ph

Quenching or Bursting: Star Formation Acceleration--A New Methodology for Tracing Galaxy Evolution

We introduce a new methodology for the direct extraction of galaxy physical parameters from multi-wavelength photometry and spectroscopy. We use semi-analytic models that describe galaxy evolution in the context of large scale cosmological simulation to provide a catalog of galaxies, star formation histories, and physical parameters. We then apply stellar population synthesis models and a simple extinction model to calculate the observable broad-band fluxes and spectral indices for these galaxies. We use a linear regression analysis to relate physical parameters to observed colors and spectral indices. The result is a set of coefficients that can be used to translate observed colors and indices into stellar mass, star formation rate, and many other parameters, including the instantaneous time derivative of the star formation rate which we denote the {\it Star Formation Acceleration (SFA)}, We apply the method to a test sample of galaxies with GALEX photometry and SDSS spectroscopy, deriving relationships between stellar mass, specific star formation rate, and star formation acceleration. We find evidence for a mass-dependent SFA in the green valley, with low mass galaxies showing greater quenching and higher mass galaxies greater bursting. We also find evidence for an increase in average quenching in galaxies hosting AGN. A simple scenario in which lower mass galaxies accrete and become satellite galaxies, having their star forming gas tidally and/or ram-pressure stripped, while higher mass galaxies receive this gas and react with new star formation can qualitatively explain our results.Comment: 33 pages, 31 figures, ApJ accepte

The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey VII: The Bivariate Neutral Hydrogen-Stellar Mass Function for Massive Galaxies

We present the bivariate neutral atomic hydrogen (HI)---stellar mass function (HISMF) (phi(M_HI, M_*)) for massive (log M_*/M_sun > 10) galaxies derived from a sample of 480 local (0.025 < z < 0.050) galaxies observed in HI at Arecibo as part of the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS). We fit six different models to the HISMF and find that a Schechter function that extends down to a 1% HI gas fraction, with an additional fractional contribution below that limit, is the best parametrization of the HISMF. We calculate Omega_{HI, M_* >10^10} and find that massive galaxies contribute 41% of the HI density in the local universe. In addition to the binned HISMF we derive a continuous bivariate fit, which reveals that the Schechter parameters only vary weakly with stellar mass: M_HI^*, the characteristic HI mass, scales as M_*^0.39, alpha, the slope of the HISMF at moderate HI masses, scales as M_*^0.07, and f, the fraction of galaxies with HI gas fraction greater than 1%, scales as M_*^-0.24. The variation of f with stellar mass should be a strong constraint for numerical simulations. To understand the physical mechanisms that produce the shape of the HISMF we redefine the parameters of the Schechter function as explicit functions of stellar mass and star formation rate to produce a trivariate fit. This analysis reveals strong trends with SFR. While M_HI^* varies weakly with stellar mass and SFR, alpha is a stronger function of both stellar mass and especially star formation rate. The HISMF is a crucial tool that can be used to constrain cosmological galaxy simulations, test observational predictions of the HI content of populations of galaxies, and identify galaxies whose properties deviate from average trends.Comment: 31 pages, 20 figures, accepted to Ap