Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Wednesday, 09 September 2026, 10:00   (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)

The mass-dependent baryon cycle

Amelie Saintonge
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn

The interstellar medium plays a central role in the galaxy evolution process; it is the reservoir that fuels galaxy growth via star formation, the repository of material formed by these stars, and a sensitive tracer of internal and external processes that affect entire galaxies (e.g. accretion and feedback). This process of exchange of gas with the large-scale environment and its conversion into stars is generally referred to as the baryon cycle. While we have identified a long list of ingredients that play a role in this baryon cycle, their relative importance and how this balance might change with mass, scale, environment and time is still poorly constrained. Combining results from recent observing campaigns with (sub)mm/radio facilities (IRAM, ALMA, APEX) as well as large optical spectroscopic surveys (DESI) with expectations from simulations and theory, a picture emerges where galaxy evolution is driven by gas availability on galactic- and molecular cloud-scales and the efficiency of the star formation process out of this gas, depending on local conditions in the interstellar medium. Crucially, the balance between these processes is found to be strongly mass-dependent.