A study of the HI gas fractions of galaxies at z ~ 1
Abstract
Due to the fact that HI mass measurements are not available for large galaxy samples at high redshifts, we apply a photometric estimator of the HI-to-stellar mass ratio (MHI/M*) calibrated using a local Universe sample of galaxies to a sample of galaxies at z ~ 1 in the DEEP2 survey. We use these HI mass estimates to calculate HI mass functions (HIMFs) and cosmic HI mass densities (OmegaHI), and to examine the correlation between star formation rate and HI gas content, for galaxies at z ~ 1. We have estimated HI gas masses for ~ 7,000 galaxies in the DEEP2 survey with redshifts in the range 0.75 < z < 1.4 and stellar masses M* > 1010 Msolar, using a combination of the rest-frame ultraviolet-optical colour (NUV - r) and stellar mass density (mu*) as a way to estimate MHI/M*. It is found that the high mass end of high-z HI mass function (HIMF) is quite similar to that of the local HIMF. The lower limit of OmegaHI,limit = 2.1 * 10-4 h70-1, obtained by directly integrating the HI mass of galaxies with M* > 1010 Msolar, confirms that massive star-forming galaxies do not dominate the neutral gas at z ~ 1. We study the evolution of the HI mass to stellar mass ratio from z ~ 1 to today and find a steeper relation between HI gas mass fraction and stellar mass at higher redshifts. Specifically, galaxies with M* = 1011 Msolar at z ~ 1 are found to have 3 - 4 times higher neutral gas fractions than local galaxies, while the increase is as high as 4 - 12 times at M* = 1010 Msolar. The quantity MHI/SFR exhibits very large scatter, and the scatter increases from a factor of 5 - 7 at z = 0 to factors close to a hundred at z = 1. This implies that there is no relation between HI gas and star formation in high redshift galaxies. The HI gas must be linked to cosmological gas accretion processes at high redshifts.