THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY

By Edmond Cheung, S. Faber, D. Koo, A. Dutton, L. Simard, E. McGrath, J.-S. Huang, Eric F. Bell, A. Dekel, Jerome J. Fang and 18 more. 2012

164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The shutdown of star formation in galaxies is generally termed “quenching.” Quenching may occur through a variety of processes, e.g., active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, stellar feedback, or the shock heating of gas in the dark matter halo. However, which mechanism(s) is, in fact, responsible for quenching is still in question. This paper addresses quenching by searching for traces of possible quenching processes through their effects on galaxy structural parameters such as stellar mass (M*), M*/re, surface stellar mass density (∼M*/r2e), and Sérsic index (n). We analyze the rest-frame U − B color correlations versus these structural parameters using a sample of galaxies in the redshift range 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 from the DEEP2/AEGIS survey. In addition to global radii, stellar masses, and Sérsic parameters, we also use “bulge” and “disk” photometric measurements from GIM2D fits to HST/ACS V and I images. We assess the tightness of the color relationships by measuring their “overlap regions,” defined as the area in color-parameter space in which red and blue galaxies overlap; the parameter that minimizes these overlap regions is considered to be the most effective color discriminator. We find that Sérsic index (n) has the smallest overlap region among all tested parameters and resembles a step function with a threshold value of n = 2.3. There exists, however, a significant population of outliers with blue colors yet high n values that seem to contradict this behavior; they make up ≈40% of n > 2.3 galaxies. We hypothesize that their Sérsic values may be distorted by bursts of star formation, AGNs, and/or poor fits, leading us to consider central surface stellar mass density, Σ*1 kpc, as an alternative to Sérsic index. Not only does Σ*1 kpc correct the outliers, but it also forms a tight relationship with color, suggesting that the innermost structure of galaxies is most physically linked with quenching. Furthermore, at z ∼ 0.65, the majority of the blue cloud galaxies cannot simply fade onto the red sequence since their GIM2D bulge masses are only half as large on average as the bulge masses of similar red sequence galaxies, thus demonstrating that stellar mass must absolutely increase at the centers of galaxies as they quench. We discuss a two-stage model for quenching in which galaxy star formation rates are controlled by their dark halos while they are still in the blue cloud and a second quenching process sets in later, associated with the central stellar mass buildup. The mass buildup is naturally explained by any non-axisymmetric features in the potential, such as those induced by mergers and/or disk instabilities. However, the identity of the second quenching agent is still unknown. We have placed our data catalog online.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65d2c358b3e8e3f49bebef816c9714bf19fbfbd7

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Citations in the corpus

BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “…their surface brightness profile shapes tend to be shallow (n ∼ 1), while quiescent galaxies feature cuspier light profiles (e.g., Wuyts et al. 2011; Bell et al. 2012; Cheung et al. 2012, although see also Bruce et al. 2012 for decomposed light profiles at high stellar masses and redshifts).”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, methodology): “The important link between bulge growth and quenching has also been observed using photometric data alone, both for local galaxies (Fang et al. 2013) and as a function of redshift (Bell et al. 2012; Cheung et al. 2012).”
Compaction and quenching of high-z galaxies in cosmological simulations: blue and red nuggets (2014, background): “…findings concerning high-redshift star-forming and quenched galaxy populations, the compact “blue” nuggets and red nuggets, both atz < 1 (Cheung et al. 2012; Kauffmann et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2013) and atz = 1 − 4 (Barro et al. 2013; Kaviraj et al. 2013a,b; Lee et al. 2013; Williams…”
Evolution of density profiles in high-z galaxies: compaction and quenching inside-out (2015, unknown): “…Mendel et al. 2013; Cibinel et al. 2013a; Fang et al. 2013; Schawinski et al. 2014; Omand et al. 2014; Bluck et al. 2014; Woo et al. 2015) and at high-z (Wuyts et al. 2011, 2012; Bell et al. 2012; Cheung et al. 2012; Szomoru et al. 2012; Barro et al. 2013; Lang et al. 2014; Tacchella et al. 2015c).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, result): “Recent works have shown that the correlation between quiescence and other internal properties such as spheroid fraction, velocity dispersion, and central density is even stronger than that with stellar mass (Bell et al. 2012, Bluck et al. 2014, Cheung et al. 2012, Lang et al. 2014).”
Wet Disc Contraction to Galactic Blue Nuggets and Quenching to Red Nuggets (2013, background): “In particular, the compact side reveals that a compact galaxy could be either star forming or quenched or in transition between the two (Kauffmann et al. 2012; Cheung et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2013; Barro et al. 2013a).”
A unified model for galactic discs: star formation, turbulence driving, and mass transport (2017, background): “…that transition from the blue, star-forming cloud to the quenched, red sequence do so by ceasing their star formation from the inside out, after a central stellar bulge builds up (e.g. Cheung et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2012, 2013; Genzel et al. 2014; Nelson et al. 2016; Belfiore et al. 2017).”
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): “Two recent papers, Cheung et al. (2012) and Fang et al. (2013), also look for the effect of indirect indicators of the bulge (central stellar mass surface density within 1 kpc) coupling to the star forming properties of the whole galaxy.”
A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “Following in the footsteps of Cheung et al. (2012), which presented evidence that quenching is linked with inner stellar mass density in z∼ 0.8 galaxies, we explore the link between color and inner mass density with our nearer sample.”
EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…stellar surface density), and not the total stellar mass, appears to be most strongly correlated with the quenched (red) fraction at the highmass tail of the z = 0–2.5 galaxy population (Franx et al. 2008; Cheung et al. 2012; Bell et al. 2012; Wake et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2013; Lang et al. 2014).”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, methodology): “Similar conclusions have been found when using other surface mass density definitions (Cheung et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2013; Barro et al. 2013, 2015; Tacchella et al. 2015) or Sérsic index (see e.g. Bell et al. 2012).”
Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, background): “…structural differences in SFGs and quiescent galaxies are always present, suggesting that having concentrated (denser) surface density profiles is a requisite for quenching (Kauffmann et al. 2003, 2006; Schiminovich et al. 2007; Bell 2008; Cheung et al. 2012; Fang et al. 2013; Lang et al. 2014).”