Post-starburst galaxies: more than just an interesting curiosity

By V. Wild, C. Walcher, Peter H. Johansson, L. Tresse, S. Charlot, Agnieszka Pollo, O. Fèvre, L. Ravel. 2008

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From the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey (VVDS), we select a sample of 16 galaxies with spectra which identify them as having recently undergone a strong starburst and subsequent fast quenching of star formation. These post-starburst galaxies lie in the redshift range 0.5 10 9.75 M� . They have a number density of 1 × 10 −4 Mpc −3 ,a lmost two orders of magnitude sparser than the full galaxy population with the same mass limit. We compare with simulations to show that the galaxies are consistent with being the descendants of gas-rich major mergers. Starburst mass fractions must be larger than ∼5–10 per cent and decay times shorter than ∼10 8 yr for post-starburst (PSB) spectral signatures to be observed in the simulations. We find that the presence of black hole feedback does not greatly affect the evolution of the simulated merger remnants through the PSB phase. The multiwavelength spectral energy distributions of the PSB galaxies show that 5/16 have completely ceased the formation of new stars. These five galaxies correspond to a mass flux entering the red-sequence of u ρA→Q,PSB = 0.0038 +0.0004

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07e5aa0fe9dcfb5c93de1831255db1d092e7029f

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Citations in the corpus

Dissecting the size evolution of elliptical galaxies since z∼ 1: puffing-up versus minor-merging scenarios (2011, result): “This evolution is not strong enough to be compatible with the low number of major mergers observed at least since z ∼ 1 (Bundy et al. 2009; de Ravel et al. 2009; Wild et al. 2009; López-Sanjuan et al. 2010), as well as with recent numerical simulations (Khochfar & Silk 2009).”
PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1 (2013, methodology): “We draw ∆tb from a logarithmic distribution in the range 30 − 300 Myr (i.e., shorter-duration bursts are preferred) and Fb from a logarithmic distribution spanning 0.03 − 4 (Salim et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2009).”
Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, methodology): “While the PCA is a powerful tool to identify true post-starburst galaxies(Wild et al. 2009), we are in this analysis interested simply in the extremes of the star-forming population.”
Evolutionary stellar population synthesis with MILES – II. Scaled-solar and α-enhanced models (2015, methodology): “An alternative method is the use of principal component analysis (e.g. Covino, Galletti & Pasinetti 1995; Wild et al. 2009).”
Stellar and Quasar Feedback in Concert: Effects on AGN Accretion, Obscuration, and Outflows (2015, background): “…rates up to ∼ 100− 1000 times the BH accretion rate, and spatial extents of ∼ 0.1−10 kpc (Tremonti et al. 2007; Prochaska & Hennawi 2009; Moe et al. 2009; Wild et al. 2009; Fischer et al. 2010; Humphrey et al. 2010; Dunn et al. 2010; Bautista et al. 2010; Feruglio et al. 2010; Sturm et al.…”
A LARGE POPULATION OF MASSIVE COMPACT POST-STARBURST GALAXIES AT z > 1: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SIZE EVOLUTION AND QUENCHING MECHANISM OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2011, background): “The properties of relatively large samples of poststarburst galaxies have only been studied out to z ∼ 1 (e.g., Tran et al. 2003; Le Borgne et al. 2006; Wild et al. 2009; Yan et al. 2009; Vergani et al. 2010).”
The MUSE 3D view of the Hubble Deep Field South (2014, result): “Although the MUSE HDFS field is only a single pointing, and thus prone to cosmic variance, one can compare the measured redshift distribution with those from other deep spectroscopic surveys (e.g. zCOSMOS-Deep - Lilly et al. 2007, Lilly Article number, page 13 of 21 A&A proofs: manuscript no. muse_H”
A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A critical look at variations in extreme environments (2010, background): “These results depend on the assumed SFH, which in general is not precisely constrained with optical spectroscopy (e.g. Wild et al. 2009).”
Evolutionary stellar population synthesis with MILES – I. The base models and a new line index system (2010, methodology): “An alternative method is the use of Principal Component Analysis (e.g. Covino et al. 1995; Wild et al. 2009).”
Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, background): “Thereafter, most probably, depletion in gas supplies will result in reduced star formation later in the post-merger phase (as in Wild et al. 2009).”
Timing the starburst–AGN connection (2010, background): “For a model in which SFR declines exponentially, τ values much greater than 0.3 Gyr are excluded as they would not produce the observed population of post-starburst galaxies (Wild et al. 2009).”
MOSFIRE Spectroscopy of Quiescent Galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5. II. Star Formation Histories and Galaxy Quenching (2018, background): “Finally, studies at lower redshift found that the contribution of post-starburst galaxies to the growth of the red sequence declines strongly from z ∼ 1 to z ∼ 0 (Wild et al. 2009; Dressler et al. 2013; Rowlands et al. 2018).”
Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, background): “On the other hand, spectra are better at picking up recent bursts through their Balmer lines (e.g. Wild et al. 2007, 2009).”