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The measured gas masses and star formation efficiencies binned by star formation rate relative to the Main Sequence (MS), with the median for each bin as a horizontal line and the average as a blue circle. An increased rate of star formation per unit gas mass is apparent with increasing distance from the main sequence relative to the variation observed in the gas mass.

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Star formation rate drivers in early Universe galaxies

ALMA continues to be an important tool in the study of star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. In a recent ALMA study, Dr. Scoville and his collaborators examined 708 COSMOS-field star-forming galaxies in the redshift range 0.3 to 4.5 to derive their star formation and ISM properties.  For these studies, ALMA sub-millimeter dust continuum emission is used to estimate the amount of molecular gas in each galaxy, and the star formation rate (SFR) is estimated via extinction-corrected UV/optical emission and infrared light. The authors find that the majority of the galaxies on the Main Sequence (MS) of star-forming galaxies have increases in SFRs due to increases in the molecular gas content, whereas galaxies above the Main Sequence (i.e., with high SFR per unit stellar mass) have increases in SFRs due to increases in the star formation efficiency.