A spectroscopic measurement of galaxy formation timescales with ROLES

We present measurements of the specific star-formation rate (SSFR)-stellar mass relation for star-forming galaxies. Our deep spectroscopic samples are based on the Redshift One LDSS3 Emission line Survey, ROLES, and European Southern Observatory, ESO, public spectroscopy at z=1, and on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at z=0.1. These datasets cover an equally deep mass range of 8.5<~log(M*/Msun)<~11 at both epochs. We find that the SSFR--mass relation evolves in a way which is remarkably independent of stellar mass, as we previously found for the star-formation rate density (SFRD)--mass relation. At higher masses, such as those probed by previous surveys, the evolution in SSFR--mass is almost independent of stellar mass. At higher masses (log(M*/Msun)>10) the shapes of the cumulative cosmic SFRDs are very similar at both z=0.1 and z=1.0, both showing 70% of the total SFRD above a mass of log(M*/Msun)>10. Mass functions are constructed for star-forming galaxies and found to evolve by only <35% between z=1 and z=0.1 over the whole mass range. The evolution is such that the mass function decreases with increasing cosmic time, confirming that galaxies are leaving the star-forming sequence/blue cloud. The observational results are extended to z~2 by adding two recent Lyman break galaxy samples, and data at these three epochs (z=0.1, 1, 2) are compared with the GALFORM semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. GALFORM predicts an overall SFR density (SFRD) as a function of stellar mass in reasonable agreement with the observations. The star formation timescales inferred from 1/SSFR also give reasonable overall agreement, with the agreement becoming worse at the lowest and highest masses. [abridged]