Being KLEVER at cosmic noon: Ionized gas outflows are inconspicuous in low-mass star-forming galaxies but prominent in massive AGN hosts
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Authors
Maiolino, R
Curti, M
Cirasuolo, M
Jones, GC
Mercurio, A
Cresci, G
Marconi, A
Cicone, C
Peng, Y
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
ISSN
0035-8711
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Concas, A., Maiolino, R., Curti, M., Hayden-Pawson, C., Cirasuolo, M., Jones, G., Mercurio, A., et al. (2022). Being KLEVER at cosmic noon: Ionized gas outflows are inconspicuous in low-mass star-forming galaxies but prominent in massive AGN hosts. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1026
Abstract
We investigate the presence of ionised gas outflows in a sample of 141
main-sequence star-forming galaxies at $1.2<z<2.6$ from the KLEVER (KMOS Lensed
Emission Lines and VElocity Review) survey. Our sample covers an exceptionally
wide range of stellar masses, $8.1<\log(M_\star/M_{\odot})<11.3$, pushing
outflow studies into the dwarf regime thanks to gravitationally lensed objects.
We stack optical rest-frame emission lines (H$\beta$, [OIII], H$\alpha$ and
[NII]) in different mass bins and seek for tracers of gas outflows by using a
novel, physically motivated method that improves over the widely used,
simplistic double Gaussian fitting. We compare the observed emission lines with
the expectations from a rotating disc (disc+bulge for the most massive
galaxies) model, whereby significant deviations are interpreted as a signature
of outflows. We find clear evidence for outflows in the most massive,
$\log(M_\star/M_{\odot}) > 10.8$, AGN-dominated galaxies, suggesting that AGNs
may be the primary drivers of these gas flows. Surprisingly, at
$\log(M_\star/M_{\odot})\leq 9.6$, the observed line profiles are fully
consistent with a rotating disc model, indicating that ionised gas outflows in
dwarf galaxies might play a negligible role even during the peak of cosmic
star-formation activity. Finally, we find that the observed mass loading factor
scales with stellar mass as expected from the TNG50 cosmological simulation,
but the ionised gas mass accounts for only 2$\%$ of the predicted value. This
suggests that either the bulk of the outflowing mass is in other gaseous phases
or the current feedback models implemented in cosmological simulations need to
be revised.
Sponsorship
ERC
Royal Society
Funder references
European Research Council (695671)
STFC (2120607)
STFC (ST/V000918/1)
Royal Society (RSRP\R1\211056)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1026
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335357
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