A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES

By Jerome J. Fang, S. Faber, D. Koo, A. Dekel. 2013

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the correlation between galaxy structure and the quenching of star formation using a sample of Sloan Digital Sky Survey central galaxies with stellar masses 9.75 < log M*/M☉ < 11.25 and redshifts z < 0.075. Galaxy Evolution Explorer UV data are used to cleanly divide the sample into star-forming and quenched galaxies and to identify galaxies in transition (the green valley). Despite a stark difference in visual appearance between blue and red galaxies, their average radial stellar mass density profiles are remarkably similar (especially in the outer regions) at fixed mass. The inner stellar mass surface density within a radius of 1 kpc, Σ1, is used to quantify the growth of the bulge as galaxies evolve. When galaxies are divided into narrow mass bins, their distribution in the color-Σ1 plane at fixed mass forms plausible evolutionary tracks. Σ1 seems to grow as galaxies evolve through the blue cloud, and once it crosses a threshold value, galaxies are seen to quench at fixed Σ1. The Σ1 threshold for quenching grows with stellar mass, . However, the existence of some star-forming galaxies above the threshold Σ1 implies that a dense bulge is necessary but not sufficient to quench a galaxy fully. This would be consistent with a two-step quenching process in which gas within a galaxy is removed or stabilized against star formation by bulge-driven processes (such as a starburst, active galactic nucleus feedback, or morphological quenching), whereas external gas accretion is suppressed by separate halo-driven processes (such as halo gas shock heating). Quenching thus depends on an interplay between the inner structure of a galaxy and its surrounding dark matter halo, and lack of perfect synchrony between the two could produce the observed scatter in color versus Σ1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d4588793288d9f916e96b1fce181c56beeb3b5a

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Citations in the corpus

Compaction and quenching of high-z galaxies in cosmological simulations: blue and red nuggets (2014, background): “The slope of theΣ1 −Ms relation for the quenched galaxies is only somewhat flatter than that of the SFGs, and its zero point is slowly shifting with time toward larger masses, qualitatively similar to observations (Fang et al. 2013; Tacchella et al. 2015a).”
Evolution of density profiles in high-z galaxies: compaction and quenching inside-out (2015, background): “…and galaxy structure in the local universe (Kauffmann et al. 2003; Franx et al. 2008; Robaina et al. 2012; 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.…”
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.”
Wet Disc Contraction to Galactic Blue Nuggets and Quenching to Red Nuggets (2013, background): “These are consistent with the findings of Fang et al. (2013), and with the theoretical prediction, eq.”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, background): “Remarkably, at R & rn profiles of all early and late type galaxies have similar shape (see also Kravtsov 2013; Fang et al. 2013).”
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).”
BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “…galaxy surveys demonstrated that quiescence is strongly linked with structural and morphological parameters such as the Sérsic index, stellar mass density and the central velocity dispersion (Kauffmann et al. 2003, 2006; Schiminovich et al. 2007; Bell 2008; Fang et al. 2013; Cheung et al. 2012).”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, result): “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).”
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).”
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).”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “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).”