MORPHOLOGICAL QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION: MAKING EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES RED

By M. Martig, Frédéric Bournaud, Romain Teyssier, A. Dekel. 2009

476 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We point out a natural mechanism for quenching of star formation in early-type galaxies (ETGs). It automatically links the color of a galaxy with its morphology and does not require gas consumption, removal or termination of gas supply. Given that star formation takes place in gravitationally unstable gas disks, it can be quenched when a disk becomes stable against fragmentation to bound clumps. This can result from the growth of a stellar spheroid, for instance by mergers. We present the concept of morphological quenching (MQ) using standard disk instability analysis, and demonstrate its natural occurrence in a cosmological simulation using an efficient zoom-in technique. We show that the transition from a stellar disk to a spheroid can be sufficient to stabilize the gas disk, quench star formation, and turn an ETG red and dead while gas accretion continues. The turbulence necessary for disk stability can be stirred up by sheared perturbations within the disk in the absence of bound star-forming clumps. While other quenching mechanisms, such as gas stripping, active galactic nucleus feedback, virial shock heating, and gravitational heating are limited to massive halos, MQ can explain the appearance of red ETGs also in halos less massive than ∼1012  M ☉. The dense gas disks observed in some of today's red ellipticals may be the relics of this mechanism, whereas red galaxies with quenched gas disks could be more frequent at high redshift.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cc70313531e0a5135e38c1cb58bcecba83dd6e7

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Somerville
4. A. Dekel
5. R. Dav'e
6. M. Cappellari
7. C. Conroy
8. Volker Springel

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. M. Cappellari
4. A. Dekel
5. C. Conroy
6. R. Somerville
7. R. Dav'e
8. P. V. van Dokkum

Citations in the corpus

• COLD GASS, an IRAM legacy survey of molecular gas in massive galaxies - II. The non-universality of the molecular gas depletion time-scale (2011, background): “Morphological quenching (e.g. Martig et al. 2009) and feedback scenarios, which prevent the molecular gas C© 2011 The Authors, MNRAS 415, 61–76 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society C© 2011 RAS Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/415/1/61/988902 by guest on…”
• Compaction and quenching of high-z galaxies in cosmological simulations: blue and red nuggets (2014, background): “…disc instability (by increasing the Toomre Q parameter to above unity), either by the gravitational effect on the rotation curve (morphological quenching, Martig et al. 2009, 2013; Genzel et al. 2014a), by the reduced gas surface density in the disc, or by high feedback-driven velocity dispersion.”
• Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk - I. The solar vicinity (2012, methodology): “The simulation used in this work is part of a suite of numerical experiments first presented by Martig et al. (2012), where the authors studied the evolution of 33 simulated galaxies fromz = 5 to z = 0 using the zoom-in technique described in Martig et al. (2009).”
• What controls star formation in the central 500 pc of the Galaxy (2013, background): “The paucity of star formation in the CMZ is therefore not due to the ‘morphological quenching’ (Martig et al. 2009) of star formation that is considered to enable the long-term presence of quiescent gas reservoirs in galactic spheroids ifQtot > 1.”
• Radial migration does little for Galactic disc thickening (2012, methodology): “These numerical experiments were first presented byMartig et al. (2012), where the authors studied the evolution of 33 simulated galaxies from z = 5 to z = 0 using the zoom-in technique described in Martig et al. (2009).”
• The ATLAS3D project - X. On the origin of the molecular and ionized gas in early-type galaxies (2011, background): “Recent work has suggested one way to completely sidestep this problem, via ‘morphological quenching’ (Martig et al.2009).”
• Simulations of binary galaxy mergers and the link with fast rotators, slow rotators, and kinematically distinct cores (2011, background): “…(e.g. Hernquist & Barnes 1991; Jesseit et al. 2009; Bois et al. 2010; Hoffman et al. 2010), the presence of gaseous discs (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2009; Martig et al. 2009), the relation between nuclear black holes and the dynamics of the stars (e.g. Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist 2005; Johansson,…”
• Wet Disc Contraction to Galactic Blue Nuggets and Quenching to Red Nuggets (2013, background): “(2), we notice that Q-quenching can happen in three different ways, or in a combined way, as follows: • Morphological quenching (Martig et al. 2009), where the growth of total central density is expressed as an increase in Ω.”
• WHAT TURNS GALAXIES OFF? THE DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGIES OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2 FROM CANDELS (2011, background): “…et al. 2009), changes in the mode of gas accretion onto galaxies as a function of dark matter halo mass (Kereš et al. 2005; Dekel & Birnboim 2006; Cattaneo et al. 2006; Birnboim et al. 2007), and the possibility of the growth of a stellar spheroid stabilizing a gas disk (Martig et al. 2009).”
• The ATLAS3D project – XX. Mass–size and mass–σ distributions of early-type galaxies: bulge fraction drives kinematics, mass-to-light ratio, molecular gas fraction and stellar initial mass function (2012, background): “The reduced efficiency of star formation by morphological quenching (Martig et al. 2009; Ceverino, Dekel & Bournaud 2010; Martig et al. 2013, hereafter Paper XXII) may be one of the processes explaining why on average bigger bulges correspond to older ages and larger M/L.”
• Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, background): “…dispersion may in fact be correlated with the growth of a central black hole; the associated feedback can reduce starformation, though alternative explanations in terms of, e.g., morph logical transformations, may still be viable solutions (e.g., Martig et al. 2009; Huertas-Company et al. 2015).”
• High-redshift clumpy discs and bulges in cosmological simulations (2009, methodology): “On the other hand, as demonstrated by Martig et al. (2009), such galaxies may eventually re-grow a sufficiently massive gas disc that becomes unstable again, and thus turn back into a blue, star-forming, late-type galaxy.”
• 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): “This rules out morphological quenching (e.g. Martig et al. 2009) as being a primary driver to the cessation in star formation.”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, background): “…the central regions of high-mass galaxies, caused by a massive bulge stabilizing the gas against the formation of massive star-forming clumps (e.g., Martig et al. 2009; Genzel et al. 2014a), efficient removal of gas via powerful nuclear outflows (Förster Schreiber et al. 2014; Genzel et al.…”
• Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology (2016, methodology): “The simulation used is part of a suite of numerical experiments presented by Martig et al. (2012), where the authors studied the evolution of 33 simulated galaxies from z = 5 to z = 0 using the zoom-in technique described by Martig et al. (2009).”
• A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES (2013, background): “Recently, Martig et al. (2009) proposed that the buildup of a central bulge is sufficient to stabilize the surrounding gas disk from collapsing and forming stars.”
• THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONO-ABUNDANCE AND MONO-AGE STELLAR POPULATIONS IN THE MILKY WAY DISK (2016, methodology): “The simulation used for the MCM model is part of a suite of numerical experiments presented by Martig et al. (2012), where the authors studied the evolution of 33 simulated galaxies from z = 5 to z = 0 using the zoom-in technique described by Martig et al. (2009).”
• The size evolution of star-forming and quenched galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, background): “G A ] 2 4 by enhancing the Toomre (1964) stability of the disc (Martig et al. 2009), or by harboring a particularly powerful AGN at their centers (Rangel et al. 2014).”
• THE RISE AND FALL OF PASSIVE DISK GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ALONG THE RED SEQUENCE REVEALED BY COSMOS (2009, background): “An example of this is “morphological quenching” (MQ Martig et al. 2009).”
• The ATLAS3D Project – XXVIII. Dynamically driven star formation suppression in early-type galaxies (2014, background): “This factor of two also is similar to predictions from simulations of gas in idealised galaxies which is affected by ‘morphological quenching’ (Martig et al. 2009 and Paper XXII).”