del P Lagos, Claudia, Schaye, Joop, Schaller, Matthieu, Obreschkow, Danail, Bahé, Yannick M, Benítez-Llambay, Alejandro, Chaikin, Evgenii, Correa, Camila, Davis, Timothy A.  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4932-9379, Frenk, Carlos S, Husko, Filip, Kaasinen, Melanie, McGibbon, Robert J, Oman, Kyle, Ploeckinger, Sylvia, Richings, Alexander J, Trayford, James W, Wang, Jing and Wright, Ruby J
2026.
Kennicutt-Schmidt relation of galaxies over 13 billion years in the COLIBRE hydrodynamical simulations.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
549
(2)
, stag947.
10.1093/mnras/stag947
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Abstract
We investigate the correlation between star formation rate (SFR) surface density and gas surface density (known as the Kennicutt-Schmidt, KS, relation) at kiloparsec (kpc) scales across cosmic time (0 ≤ z ≤ 8) for galaxies with stellar masses , using the COLIBRE state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. These simulations feature on-the-fly non-equilibrium chemistry coupled to dust grain evolution and detailed radiative cooling down to ≈10 K, enabling direct predictions for the atomic (H i) and molecular (H2) KS relations. At z ≈ 0, COLIBRE reproduces the observed (spatially-resolved) KS relations for H i and H2, including the associated scatter, which we predict to be significantly correlated with stellar surface density, local specific SFR (sSFR), and gas metallicity. We show that the H i KS relation steepens for lower-mass galaxies, while the H2 KS relation shifts to higher normalization in galaxies with higher sSFRs. The H2 depletion time decreases by a factor of ≈20 from z = 0 to z = 8, primarily due to the decreasing gas-phase metallicity. This results in less H2 and more H i being associated with a given SFR at higher redshift. We also find that galaxies with higher sSFRs have a larger molecular gas content and higher star formation efficiency per unit gas mass on kpc scales. The predicted evolution of the H2 depletion time and its correlation with a galaxy’s sSFR agree remarkably well with observations in a wide redshift range, 0 ≤ z ≤ 5.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Physics and Astronomy |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| ISSN: | 0035-8711 |
| Date of First Compliant Deposit: | 1 June 2026 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2026 11:51 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187326 |
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