arXiv subjects

S. P. Driver

Publications and source records attributed to S. P. Driver.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Deconstructing the galaxy stellar mass function by star formation and environment

Using the equatorial Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) dataset, we investigate how the low-redshift galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) varies across different galaxy populations and as a function of halo mass. We find that: (i) The GSMF of passive and star-forming galaxies are well described by a double and a single Schechter function, respectively, although the inclusion of a second component for the star-forming population yields a more accurate description. Furthermore, star-forming galaxies dominate the low-mass end of the total GSMF, whereas passive galaxies mainly shape the intermediate-to-high-mass regime. (ii) The GSMF of central galaxies dominates the high-mass end, whereas satellites and ungrouped galaxies shape the intermediate-to-low-mass regime. Additionally, we find a relative increase in the abundance of low-mass galaxies moving from dense group environments to isolated systems. (iii) More massive halos host more massive galaxies, have a higher fraction of passive systems, and show a steeper decline in the number of intermediate-mass galaxies. Finally, our results reveal larger differences between passive and star-forming GSMFs than predicted by a phenomenological quenching model, but generally confirm the environmental quenching trends for centrals and satellites reported in other works.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): First Data Release Covering The D10 (COSMOS) Region

The Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) is a deep, high-completeness multi-wavelength survey based around spectroscopic observations using the Anglo-Australian Telescope's AAOmega spectrograph. The survey covers $\sim4.5$deg$^{2}$ over three extragalactic fields to Y$_{AB}<21.2$mag and probes sources at $0<z<1.2$, with a median redshift of $z=0.53$. Here we describe the DEVILS spectroscopic observations, data reduction and redshift analysis. We then describe and release to the community all DEVILS data in the 10h (D10, COSMOS) region including: i) catalogues of redshifts, photometry, SED fitting for physical properties, visual morphologies, structural decompositions and group environments/halo masses, ii) matched imaging in 28 bands from x-rays to radio continuum, and iii) reduced 1D spectra. All data are made publicly available through Data Central. Within D10 we obtain 5,442 new high-quality spectroscopic redshifts. When combined with existing, lower-quality, redshift information ($i.e.$ photometric redshifts) this is increased to 7,946. Of these, 3,122 have a spectroscopic redshift from another source (many that was not available at the time of the DEVILS observations). As such, DEVILS provides new unique high-quality spectroscopic redshifts for 4,824 faint sources in COSMOS. This increases the spectroscopic completeness at Y-mag$\sim$21 from $\sim$50% in other samples to $\sim$90% in DEVILS. Finally, we show the power of this dataset by exploring the suppression of star formation in over-dense environments, split by morphology and stellar mass, and highlighting the ubiquitous nature of environmental quenching.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Evolution of the Morphology-Density Relation

Galaxies with different morphological characteristics likely have different evolutionary histories, such that understanding the mechanisms that drive morphological change can provide valuable insights into the galaxy evolution process. These mechanisms largely correlate with local environment, ultimately leading to the well-known local morphology-density relation. To explore how the morphology-density relation is produced, we must look to earlier times, and trace the co-evolution of environment and morphology in an un-biased and self-consistent manner. Here we use new environmental metrics from the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) to explore the spectroscopic morphology-density relation at intermediate redshift (0.3<z<0.5) and compare directly to the Galaxy And Mass Assembly Survey (GAMA) at 0<z<0.08. Importantly, both the galaxy morphologies and environmental metrics in DEVILS and GAMA are derived in a very similar manner, reducing any methodology biases. We see a clear evolution in morphological classes between DEVILS and GAMA, which is modulated by environment. These trends are consistent with a scenario where in all environments disk-dominated galaxies are transitioning to classical bulge+disk systems (potentially via minor mergers and/or secular evolution), and in high-density environments there is an increasing prevalence of visually-selected elliptical galaxies (potentially via major mergers and/or disk fading); with the fraction of ellipticals increasing by ~0.3 in the most dense regions over the last ~7Gyr, but remaining largely unchanged in low-density environments.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): The sSFR-M$_{\star}$plane part I: The recent SFH of galaxies and movement through the plane

In a recent paper we parameterised the evolution of the star-formation rate dispersion ($\sigma_{SFR}$) across the specific star-formation rate - stellar mass plane (sSFR-M$_{\star}$) using the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) - suggesting that the point at which the minimum in the dispersion occurs (M$^{*}_{\sigma-min}$) defines a boundary between different physical mechanisms affecting galaxy evolution. Here we expand upon that work to determine the movement of galaxies through the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane using their recent star-formation histories (SFHs) and explore how this leads to the observed $\sigma_{SFR}$-M$_{\star}$ relation. We find that galaxies in sub-regions of the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane show distinctly different SFHs, leading to a complex evolution of the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane and star-forming sequence (SFS). However, we find that selecting galaxies based on stellar mass and position relative to SFS alone (as is traditionally the case), may not identify sources with common recent SFHs, and therefore propose a new selection methodology. We then use the recent SFH of galaxies to measure the evolution of the SFS, showing that it has varying contributions from galaxies with different SFHs that lead to the observed changes in slope, normalisation and turnover stellar mass. Finally, we determine the overall evolution of the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane from $z\sim1$ to today. In the second paper in this series we will discuss physical properties of galaxies with common recent SFHs and how these lead to the observed $\sigma_{SFR}$-M$_{\star}$ relation and evolution of the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): The sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane part II: Starbursts, SFHs and AGN Feedback

In part I of this series we discussed the variation of star-formation histories (SFHs) across the specific star formation rate - stellar mass plane (sSFR-M$_{\star}$) using the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS). Here we explore the physical mechanisms that are likely driving these observational trends, by comparing the properties of galaxies with common recent SFH shapes. Overall, we find that the processes shaping the movement of galaxies through the sSFR-M$_{\star}$ plane can be be largely split into two stellar mass regimes, bounded by the minimum SFR dispersion ($\sigma_{SFR}$) point. At lower stellar masses we find that large $\sigma_{SFR}$ values are likely observed due to a combination of stochastic star-formation processes and a large variety in absolute sSFR values, but relatively constant/flat SFHs. While at higher stellar masses we see strong observational evidence that Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are associated with rapidly declining SFHs, and that these galaxies reside in the high $\sigma_{SFR}$ region of the plane. As such, we suggest that AGN feedback, leading to galaxy quenching, is the primary driver of the high $\sigma_{SFR}$ values. These results are consistent with previous theoretical interpretations of the $\sigma_{SFR}$-M$_{\star}$ relation.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Environment-dependent galaxy stellar mass functions in the low-redshift Universe

From a carefully selected sample of $52\,089$ galaxies and $10\,429$ groups, we investigate the variation of the low-redshift galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) in the equatorial Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) dataset as a function of four different environmental properties. We find that: (i) The GSMF is not strongly affected by distance to the nearest filament but rather by group membership. (ii) More massive halos tend to host more massive galaxies and exhibit a steeper decline with stellar mass in the number of intermediate-mass galaxies. This result is robust against the choice of dynamical and luminosity-based group halo mass estimates. (iii) The GSMF of group galaxies does not depend on the position within a filament, but for groups outside of filaments, the characteristic mass of the GSMF is lower. Finally, our global GSMF is well described by a double Schechter function with the following parameters: $\log [M^{\star} / (M_{\odot} \, h_{70}^{-2})] = 10.76 \pm 0.01$, $\Phi_1^{\star} = (3.75 \pm 0.09) \times 10^{-3}$ Mpc$^{-3}$ $h_{70}^3$, $\alpha_{1} = -0.86 \pm 0.03$, $\Phi_2^{\star} = (0.13 \pm 0.05) \times 10^{-3}$ Mpc$^{-3}$ $h_{70}^3$, and $\alpha_{2} = -1.71 \pm 0.06$. This result is consistent with previous GAMA studies in terms of $M^{\star}$, although we find lower values for both $\alpha_{1}$ and $\alpha_{2}$.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

JWST's PEARLS: resolved study of the stellar and dust components in starburst galaxies at cosmic noon

Dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) contribute significantly to the stellar buildup at cosmic noon. Major mergers and gas accretion are often invoked to explain DSFGs' prodigious star-formation rates (SFRs) and large stellar masses. We conducted a spatially-resolved morphological analysis of the rest-frame UV/NIR emission in three DSFGs at z~2.5. Initially discovered as CO emitters by NOEMA observations of a bright Herschel source, we observed them with the JWST/NIRCam as part of the PEARLS program. The NIRCam data reveal the galaxies' stellar populations and dust distributions on scales of 250 pc. Spatial variations in stellar mass, SFR, and dust extinction are determined in resolved maps obtained through pixel-based SED fitting. The CO emitters are massive, dusty starburst galaxies with SFRs=340-2500 Msun/yr, positioning them among the most active SFGs at 2<z<3. They belong to the ~1.5% of the entire JWST population with extremely red colors. Their morphologies are disk like, with radii of 2.0-4.4 kpc, and exhibit substructures such as clumps and spiral arms. The galaxies have dust extinctions up to Av=5-7 mag extending over several kpc with asymmetric distributions that include off-center regions resembling bent spiral arms and clumps. Their NIR dust-attenuation curve deviates from standard laws, possibly implying different dust-star geometries or dust grain properties than commonly assumed in starburst galaxies. The proximity of galaxies with consistent redshifts, strong color gradients, an overall disturbed appearance, asymmetric dust obscuration, and widespread star formation collectively favor interactions (minor mergers and flybys) as the mechanism driving the CO galaxies' exceptional SFRs. The galaxies' large masses and rich environment hint at membership in two proto-structures, as initially inferred from their association with a Planck-selected high-z source.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

JWST Photometric Time-Delay and Magnification Measurements for the Triply-Imaged Type Ia "Supernova H0pe" at z = 1.78

Supernova (SN) H0pe is a gravitationally lensed, triply-imaged, Type Ia SN (SN Ia) discovered in James Webb Space Telescope imaging of the PLCK G165.7+67.0 cluster of galaxies. Well-observed multiply-imaged SNe provide a rare opportunity to constrain the Hubble constant ($H_0$), by measuring the relative time delay between the images and modeling the foreground mass distribution. SN H0pe is located at $z=1.783$, and is the first SN Ia with sufficient light curve sampling and long enough time delays for an $H_0$ inference. Here we present photometric time-delay measurements and SN properties of SN H0pe. Using JWST/NIRCam photometry we measure time delays of $\Delta t_{ab}=-116.6^{+10.8}_{-9.3}$ and $\Delta t_{cb}=-48.6^{+3.6}_{-4.0}$ observer-frame days relative to the last image to arrive (image 2b; all uncertainties are $1\sigma$), which corresponds to a $\sim5.6\%$ uncertainty contribution for $H_0$ assuming $70 \rm{km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}}$. We also constrain the absolute magnification of each image to $\mu_{a}=4.3^{+1.6}_{-1.8}$, $\mu_{b}=7.6^{+3.6}_{-2.6}$, $\mu_{c}=6.4^{+1.6}_{-1.5}$ by comparing the observed peak near-IR magnitude of SN H0pe to the non-lensed population of SNe Ia.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

ProPane: Image Warping with Fire

In this paper we introduce the software package ProPane, written for the R data analysis language. ProPane combines the full range of wcslib projections with the C++ image manipulation routines provided by the CImg library. ProPane offers routines for image warping and combining (including stacking), and various related tasks such as image alignment tweaking and pixel masking. It can stack an effectively unlimited number of target frames using multiple parallel cores, and offers threading for many lower level routines. It has been used for a number of current and upcoming large surveys, and we present a range of its capabilities and features. ProPane is already available under a permissive open-source LGPL-3 license at github.com/asgr/ProPane (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10057053).

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2024

TREASUREHUNT: Transients and Variability Discovered with HST in the JWST North Ecliptic Pole Time Domain Field

The JWST North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) Time Domain Field (TDF) is a $>$14 arcmin diameter field optimized for multi-wavelength time-domain science with JWST. It has been observed across the electromagnetic spectrum both from the ground and from space, including with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). As part of HST observations over 3 cycles (the "TREASUREHUNT" program), deep images were obtained with ACS/WFC in F435W and F606W that cover almost the entire JWST NEP TDF. Many of the individual pointings of these programs partially overlap, allowing an initial assessment of the potential of this field for time-domain science with HST and JWST. The cumulative area of overlapping pointings is ~88 arcmin$^2$, with time intervals between individual epochs that range between 1 day and 4$+$ years. To a depth of $m_{AB}$ $\simeq$ 29.5 mag (F606W), we present the discovery of 12 transients and 190 variable candidates. For the variable candidates, we demonstrate that Gaussian statistics are applicable, and estimate that ~80 are false positives. The majority of the transients will be supernovae, although at least two are likely quasars. Most variable candidates are AGN, where we find 0.42% of the general $z$ $<$ 6 field galaxy population to vary at the $~3\sigma$ level. Based on a 5-year timeframe, this translates into a random supernova areal density of up to ~0.07 transients per arcmin$^2$ (~245 deg$^{-2}$) per epoch, and a variable AGN areal density of ~1.25 variables per arcmin$^2$ (~4500 deg$^{-2}$) to these depths.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

PEARLS: JWST counterparts of micro-Jy radio sources in the Time Domain Field

The Time Domain Field (TDF) near the North Ecliptic Pole in JWST's continuous-viewing zone will become a premier "blank field" for extragalactic science. JWST/NIRCam data in a 16 arcmin$^2$ portion of the TDF identify 4.4 $μ$m counterparts for 62 of 63 3 GHz sources with S(3 GHz) > 5 μJy. The one unidentified radio source may be a lobe of a nearby Seyfert galaxy, or it may be an infrared-faint radio source. The bulk properties of the radio-host galaxies are consistent with those found by previous work: redshifts range from 0.14 to 4.4 with a median redshift of 1.33. The radio emission arises primarily from star formation in $\sim 2/3$ of the sample and from an active galactic nucleus in $\sim 1/3$, but just over half the sample shows evidence for an AGN either in the spectral energy distribution or by radio excess. All but three counterparts are brighter than magnitude 23 AB at 4.4 $μ$m, and the exquisite resolution of JWST identifies correct counterparts for sources for which observations with lower angular resolution would mis-identify a nearby bright source as the counterpart when the correct one is faint and red. Up to 11% of counterparts might have been unidentified or misidentified absent NIRCam observations.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

Dynamic Wisp Removal in JWST NIRCam Images

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) near-infrared camera (NIRCam) has been found to exhibit serious wisp-like structures in four of its eight short-wavelength detectors. The exact structure and strength of these wisps is highly variable with the position and orientation of JWST, so the use of static templates is non-optimal. Here we investigate a dynamic strategy to mitigate these wisps using long-wavelength reference images. Based on a suite of experiments where we embed a worst-case scenario median-stacked wisp into wisp-free images, we define suitable parameters for our wisp removal strategy. Using this setup we re-process wisp-affected public Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) data in the North Ecliptic Pole Time Domain Field (NEP-TDF), resulting in significant visual improvement in our detector frames and reduced noise in the final stacked images.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Spectroscopy of the Supernova H0pe Host Galaxy at Redshift 1.78

Supernova (SN) H0pe was discovered as a new transient in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRCam images of the galaxy cluster PLCK G165.7+67.0 taken as part of the "Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science" (PEARLS) JWST GTO program (# 1176) on 2023 March 30 (AstroNote 2023-96; Frye et al. 2023). The transient is a compact source associated with a background galaxy that is stretched and triply-imaged by the cluster's strong gravitational lensing. This paper reports spectra in the 950-1370 nm observer frame of two of the galaxy's images obtained with Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) Utility Camera in the Infrared (LUCI) in longslit mode two weeks after the \JWST\ observations. The individual average spectra show the [OII] doublet and the Balmer and 4000 Angstrom breaks at redshift z=1.783+/-0.002. The CIGALE best-fit model of the spectral energy distribution indicates that SN H0pe's host galaxy is massive (Mstar~6x10^10 Msun after correcting for a magnification factor ~7) with a predominant intermediate age (~2 Gyr) stellar population, moderate extinction, and a magnification-corrected star formation rate ~13 Msun/yr, consistent with being below the main sequence of star formation. These properties suggest that H0pe might be a type Ia SN. Additional observations of SN H0pe and its host recently carried out with JWST (JWST-DD-4446; PI: B. Frye) will be able to both determine the SN classification and confirm its association with the galaxy analyzed in this work.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Connecting MeerKAT radio continuum properties to GAMA optical emission-line and WISE mid-infrared activity

The identification of AGN in large surveys has been hampered by seemingly discordant classifications arising from differing diagnostic methods, usually tracing distinct processes specific to a particular wavelength regime. However, as shown in Yao et al. (2020), the combination of optical emission line measurements and mid-infrared photometry can be used to optimise the discrimination capability between AGN and star formation activity. In this paper we test our new classification scheme by combining the existing GAMA-WISE data with high-quality MeerKAT radio continuum data covering 8 deg$^2$ of the GAMA G23 region. Using this sample of 1 841 galaxies (z < 0.25), we investigate the total infrared (derived from 12$μ$m) to radio luminosity ratio, q(TIR), and its relationship to optical-infrared AGN and star-forming (SF) classifications. We find that while q(TIR) is efficient at detecting AGN activity in massive galaxies generally appearing quiescent in the infrared, it becomes less reliable for cases where the emission from star formation in the host galaxy is dominant. However, we find that the q(TIR) can identify up to 70 % more AGNs not discernible at optical and/or infrared wavelengths. The median q(TIR) of our SF sample is 2.57 $\pm$ 0.23 consistent with previous local universe estimates.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

The GLEAMing of the first supermassive black holes: II. A new sample of high-redshift radio galaxy candidates

While unobscured and radio-quiet active galactic nuclei are regularly being found at redshifts $z > 6$, their obscured and radio-loud counterparts remain elusive. We build upon our successful pilot study, presenting a new sample of low-frequency-selected candidate high-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) over a sky area twenty times larger. We have refined our selection technique, in which we select sources with curved radio spectra between 72-231 MHz from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey. In combination with the requirements that our GLEAM-selected HzRG candidates have compact radio morphologies and be undetected in near-infrared $K_{\rm s}$-band imaging from the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy (VIKING) survey, we find 51 new candidate HzRGs over a sky area of approximately 1200 deg$^2$. Our sample also includes two sources from the pilot study: the second-most distant radio galaxy currently known, at $z=5.55$, with another source potentially at $z \sim 8$. We present our refined selection technique and analyse the properties of the sample. We model the broadband radio spectra between 74 MHz and 9 GHz by supplementing the GLEAM data with both publicly available data and new observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array at 5.5 and 9 GHz. In addition, deep $K_{\rm s}$-band imaging from the High-Acuity Widefield $K$-band Imager (HAWK-I) on the Very Large Telescope and from the Southern Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey Regions $K_{\rm s}$-band Survey (SHARKS) is presented for five sources. We discuss the prospects of finding very distant radio galaxies in our sample, potentially within the epoch of reionisation at $z \gtrsim 6.5$.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

ProFuse: Physical Multi-Band Structural Decomposition of Galaxies and the Mass-Size-Age Plane

We present the new ProFuse R package, a simultaneous spectral (ultraviolet to far infrared) and spatial structural decomposition tool that produces physical models of galaxies and their components. This combines the functionality of the recently released ProFound (for automatic source extraction), ProFit (for extended source profiling) and ProSpect (for stellar population modelling) software packages. The key novelty of ProFuse is that it generates images using a self-consistent model for the star formation and metallicity history of the bulge and disk separately, and uses target images across a range of wavelengths to define the model likelihood and optimise our physical galaxy reconstruction. The first part of the paper explores the ProFuse approach in detail, and compares results to published structural and stellar population properties. The latter part of the paper applies ProFuse to 6,664 z < 0.06 GAMA galaxies. Using re-processed ugriZYJHKs imaging we extract structural and stellar population properties for bulges and disks in parallel. As well as producing true stellar mass based mass-size relationships, we further extend this correlation to explore the third dimensions of age and gas phase metallicity. The disks in particular demonstrate strong co-dependency between mass-size-age in a well defined plane, where at a given disk stellar mass younger disks tend to be larger. These findings are in broad agreement with work at higher redshift suggesting disks that formed earlier are physically smaller.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

The XXL Survey XLV. Linking the ages of optically selected groups to their X-ray emission

We investigate the properties of 232 optical spectroscopically selected groups from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey that overlap the XXL X-ray cluster survey. X-ray aperture flux measurements combined with GAMA group data provides the largest available sample of optical groups with detailed galaxy membership information and consistently measured X-ray fluxes and upper limits. 142 of these groups are divided into three subsets based on the relative strength of X-ray and optical emission, and we see a trend in galaxy properties between these subsets: X-ray overluminous groups contain a lower fraction of both blue and star forming galaxies compared with X-ray underluminous systems. X-ray overluminous groups also have a more dominant central galaxy, with a magnitude gap between first and second ranked galaxies on average 0.22 mag larger than in underluminous groups. The central galaxy in overluminous groups also lies closer to the centre of the group. We examine a number of other structural properties of our groups, such as axis ratio, velocity dispersion, and group crossing time and find trends with X-ray emission in some of these properties despite the high stochastic noise from the limited number of group galaxies. We attribute the trends we see to the evolutionary state of groups, with X-ray overluminous systems being more dynamically evolved than underluminous groups. The X-ray overluminous groups have had more time to develop a luminous intragroup medium, quench member galaxies, and build the mass of the central galaxy through mergers compared to underluminous groups. However, a minority of X-ray underluminous groups have properties that suggest them to be dynamically mature. The lack of hot gas in these systems cannot be accounted for by high star formation efficiency, suggesting that high gas entropy resulting from feedback is the likely cause of their weak X-ray emission.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Evolution of the $σ_{\mathrm{SFR}}$-M$_{\star}$ relation and implications for self-regulated star formation

We present the evolution of the star-formation dispersion - stellar mass relation ($σ_{SFR}$-M$_{\star}$) in the DEVILS D10 region using new measurements derived using the ProSpect spectral energy distribution fitting code. We find that $σ_{SFR}$-M$_{\star}$ shows the characteristic 'U-shape' at intermediate stellar masses from 0.1<z<0.7 for a number of metrics, including using the deconvolved intrinsic dispersion. A physical interpretation of this relation is the combination of stochastic star-formation and stellar feedback causing large scatter at low stellar masses and AGN feedback causing asymmetric scatter at high stellar masses. As such, the shape of this distribution and its evolution encodes detailed information about the astrophysical processes affecting star-formation, feedback and the lifecycle of galaxies. We find that the stellar mass that the minimum $σ_{SFR}$ occurs evolves linearly with redshift, moving to higher stellar masses with increasing lookback time and traces the turnover in the star-forming sequence. This minimum $σ_{SFR}$ point is also found to occur at a fixed specific star-formation rate (sSFR) at all epochs (sSFR~10$^{-9.6}$yr$^{-1}$). The physical interpretation of this is that there exists a maximum sSFR at which galaxies can internally self-regulate on the tight sequence of star-formation. At higher sSFRs, stochastic stellar processes begin to cause galaxies to be pushed both above and below the star-forming sequence leading to increased SFR dispersion. As the Universe evolves, a higher fraction of galaxies will drop below this sSFR threshold, causing the dispersion of the low-stellar mass end of the star-forming sequence to decrease with time.

astro-ph.GA↗