A Value-added COSMOS2020 Catalog of Physical Properties: Constraining Temperature-dependent Initial Mass Function

Abstract

This work presents and releases a catalog of new photometrically derived physical properties for the ∼105 most well-measured galaxies in the COSMOS field on the sky. Using a recently developed technique, spectral energy distributions are modeled assuming a stellar initial mass function (IMF) that depends on the temperature of gas in star-forming regions. The method is applied to the largest current sample of high-quality panchromatic photometry, the COSMOS2020 catalog, that allows for testing this assumption. It is found that the galaxies exhibit a continuum of IMF and gas temperatures, most of which are bottom-lighter than measured in the Milky Way. As a consequence, the stellar masses and star formation rates of most galaxies here are found to be lower than those measured by traditional techniques in the COSMOS2020 catalog by factors of ∼1.6–3.5 and 2.5–70.0, respectively, with the change being the strongest for the most active galaxies. The resulting physical properties provide new insights into variation of the IMF-derived gas temperature along the star-forming main sequence and at quiescence, produce a sharp and coherent picture of downsizing, as seen from the stellar mass functions, and hint at a possible high-temperature and high-density stage of early galactic evolution.