Passive Spiral Formation from Halo Gas Starvation: Gradual Transformation into S0s

By Kenji Bekki, W. Couch, Y. Shioya. 2002

266 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent spectroscopic and high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging observations have revealed significant numbers of "passive" spiral galaxies in distant clusters, with all the morphological hallmarks of a spiral galaxy (in particular, spiral arm structure), but with weak or absent star formation. Exactly how such spiral galaxies formed and whether they are the progenitors of present-day S0 galaxies is unclear. Based on analytic arguments and numerical simulations of the hydrodynamical evolution of a spiral galaxy's halo gas (which is a likely candidate for the source of gas replenishment for star formation in spirals), we show that the origin of passive spirals may well be associated with halo gas stripping. Such stripping results mainly from the hydrodynamical interaction between the halo gas and the hot intracluster gas. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that even if a spiral orbits a cluster with a pericenter distance ~3 times larger than the cluster core radius, ~80% of the halo gas is stripped within a few Gyr and, accordingly, cannot be accreted by the spiral. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that this dramatic decline in the gaseous infall rate leads to a steady increase in the Q parameter for the disk, with the spiral arm structure, although persisting, becoming less pronounced as the star formation rate gradually decreases. These results suggest that passive spirals formed in this way gradually evolve into red cluster S0s.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/10caa029ee984c9bc77fe1572688f4d3d9bcbe0d

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Citations in the corpus

Ram-pressure stripping of halo gas in disc galaxies: implications for galactic star formation in different environments (2009, methodology): “Our previous work (Bekki et al. 2002) showed that after removal of halo gas, stellar velocity dispersions (thus the Q parameter) of a disk galaxy can significantly increase in its outer part owing to dynamical heating of the disk by spiral arms.”
Galaxy ecology: groups and low-density environments in the SDSS and 2dFGRS (2003, background): “In particular, if all galaxies experience a gradual (>∼ 2 Gyr) decline in star formation when they become bound to groups or clusters (Balogh et al. 2000; Bekki et al. 2002), we expect star-forming galaxies in dense regions to show systematically lower W0(Hα).”
The Morphology-Density Relation in z ~ 1 Clusters (2005, background): “…1990; Valluri 1993; Fujita 1998) that distort galaxies as they come close to the center, interaction /merging (Icke 1985; Lavery & Henry 1988; Mamon 1992; Makino & Hut 1997; Bekki 1998), and removal and consumption of the gas due to the cluster environment (Larson et al. 1980; Bekki et al. 2002).”
Galaxy Zoo: Passive Red Spirals . (2009, methodology): “…only recently stopped forming stars, since spiral structures are expected to persist for only a short time after star formation ceases (for example Bekki et al. (2002) found that spirals arms persisted for only a few Gyrs after the gas which provides the reservoir for ongoing star formation was…”
A Wide-Field Survey of Two z ~ 0.5 Galaxy Clusters: Identifying the Physical Processes Responsible for the Observed Transformation of Spirals into S0s (2007, methodology): “The predicted timescale for cessation of star formation under starvation is consistent with our observed decline over 0.5 − 2 Gyr (Fujita 2004); in simulations by Okamoto & Nagashima (2003), a timescale of 1–2 Gyr for the halt in star formation after gas removal provided a good fit to observations.”
LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “…predictions of starvation models, in which infalling galaxies are stripped of their diffuse gaseous halos as they pass through the ICM, preventing further gas accretion onto the galaxies from the surrounding inter-galactic medium (Larson et al. 1980; Bekki et al. 2002; McCarthy et al. 2008).”
Environmental Effects on Late‐Type Galaxies in Nearby Clusters (2006, background): “The seminal idea of Larson et al. (1980) has been elaborated by Bekki et al. (2002).”
Pre-Processing of Galaxies before Entering a Cluster (2003, background): “Thus, the morphological transformation may be due to a change of Q-parameter after strangulation (Bekki et al. 2002) or tidal acceleration from a cluster potential on galaxies (Byrd, Valtonen 1990; Valluri 1993; Henriksen, Byrd 1996; Fujita 1998).”
Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, background): “We hav shown this via the ages of the stellar populations of cluster galaxies, which c© 2009 RAS, MNRAS000, 1–16 probe the recent star formation (on timescales 1 Gyr).”
The Bimodal Galaxy Color Distribution: Dependence on Luminosity and Environment (2004, background): “For example, if the transformation is due to a decreasing SFR in late–type (blue) galaxies due to interactions with neighbouring galaxies, then their color distribution should be skewed toward redder colors in denser environments.”