A STELLAR MASS THRESHOLD FOR QUENCHING OF FIELD GALAXIES

By M. Geha, M. Blanton, R. Yan, J. Tinker. 2012

246 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We demonstrate that dwarf galaxies (107 < Mstellar < 109 M☉, −12 > Mr > −18) with no active star formation are extremely rare (<0.06%) in the field. Our sample is based on the NASA-Sloan Atlas which is a reanalysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 8. We examine the relative number of quenched versus star-forming dwarf galaxies, defining quenched galaxies as having no Hα emission (EWHα < 2 Å) and a strong 4000 Å break. The fraction of quenched dwarf galaxies decreases rapidly with increasing distance from a massive host, leveling off for distances beyond 1.5 Mpc. We define galaxies beyond 1.5 Mpc of a massive host galaxy to be in the field. We demonstrate that there is a stellar mass threshold of Mstellar < 1.0 × 109 M☉ below which quenched galaxies do not exist in the field. Below this threshold, we find that none of the 2951 field dwarf galaxies are quenched; all field dwarf galaxies show evidence for recent star formation. Correcting for volume effects, this corresponds to a 1σ upper limit on the quenched fraction of 0.06%. In more dense environments, quenched galaxies account for 23% of the dwarf population over the same stellar mass range. The majority of quenched dwarf galaxies (often classified as dwarf elliptical galaxies) are within 2 virial radii of a massive galaxy, and only a few percent of quenched dwarf galaxies exist beyond 4 virial radii. Thus, for galaxies with stellar mass less than 1.0 × 109 M☉, ending star formation requires the presence of a more massive neighbor, providing a stringent constraint on models of star formation feedback.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a41e9d4ec506016803afbeae3923a9f1f1b281cb

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
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4. R. Dav'e
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6. Volker Springel
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In Instrumentation

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6. R. Dav'e
7. R. Somerville
8. Volker Springel

Citations in the corpus

• Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “109 M (Geha et al. 2012), so satellite quenching is the only process for quenching galaxies at such low mass.”
• Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “…of star formation in dwarf galaxies (Tolstoy et al. 2009) may result in a duty cycle whereby observed samples preferentially select dwarfs that are in a high sSFR state, but observations show that essentially all isolated dwarfs in the nearby universe are star-forming (Geha et al. 2012).”
• FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, background): “At slightly higher masses, quenched field galaxies are either extremely rare or exceedingly hard to detect at cosmological distances (Geha et al. 2012).”
• Is there a "too big to fail" problem in the field? (2014, background): “Some of the excluded objects will be gaspoor early-type dwarfs, which are usually found in dense environments or as satellites of larger hosts (e.g. Geha et al. 2012).”
• GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS FROM ZFOURGE/CANDELS: AN EXCESS OF LOW-MASS GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 AND THE RAPID BUILDUP OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2013, background): “…processes become increasingly important in the quenching of star formation at low masses (e.g., Hogg et al. 2003; Peng et al. 2010, 2012; Geha et al. 2012; Quadri et al. 2012), implying that the differential buildup in the quiescent SMF is at least partially due to the evolving role of…”
• THIRD-EPOCH MAGELLANIC CLOUD PROPER MOTIONS. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/WFC3 DATA AND ORBIT IMPLICATIONS (2013, methodology): “Geha et al. (2012) have used the NASA-Sloan Atlas Third-Epoch Magellanic Cloud Proper Motions I 19 to demonstrate that dwarf galaxies in the field (with masses in the LMC range) all have active star-formation (< 0.06% of field-dwarfs in their sample have no starformation).”
• Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “≈ 2 × 109 M where there is a sharp bend in the M-size relation of dwarf galaxies and the sequence of increasing bulge fraction starts, corresponds to the threshold for quenching of field galaxies discovered by Geha et al. (2012).”
• 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): “12 top middle panel) is that there appears to be a threshold in stellar mass at which galaxies start to shut off their star formation (as also seen in Geha et al. 2012), but that this threshold value varies as a function of B/T structure.”
• Quenching and ram pressure stripping of simulated Milky Way satellite galaxies (2017, background): “G A ] distance and galaxy type in the Local Group (Grebel 1999) that may connect to distance trends for intermediate luminosity dwarfs (with stellar masses above 107 M ), where most systems in the field are found to be star-forming and of late type (Geha et al. 2012).”
• 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): “9) corresponds to the threshold for quenching of field galaxies recently discovered by Geha et al. (2012).”
• DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, background): “…invoked to explain star formation quenching in massive galaxies (e.g., Croton et al. 2006; Kimm et al. 2009), the quenched fraction of central galaxies decreases with stellar mass (Wetzel et al. 2012) and may become zero below a stellar mass near 109 M (Kauffmann et al. 2003a; Geha et al. 2012).”
• A BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING OF METALS AT z ∼ 0: RESULTS FROM THE COS-HALOS SURVEY (2013, background): “Some of this stochasticity might be attributable to environment, as metallicities (Pasquali et al. 2010, 2012) and star formation (i.e., passive versus star-forming; Geha et al. 2012) properties strongly depend on the degree of isolation.”
• The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, background): “Low-mass galaxies tend to continue forming stars unless they are a satellite of or near a more massive galaxy (Geha et al. 2012).”
• Sweating the small stuff: simulating dwarf galaxies, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, and their own tiny satellites (2015, background): “/M < 10 9) that are nearly uniformly star forming in the field (Geha et al. 2012), both central and satellite ultra-faint galaxies should all be quenched.”
• BREATHING FIRE: HOW STELLAR FEEDBACK DRIVES RADIAL MIGRATION, RAPID SIZE FLUCTUATIONS, AND POPULATION GRADIENTS IN LOW-MASS GALAXIES (2015, background): “%) than the nearly 0% observed in nearby isolated galaxies (Geha et al. 2012; Karachentsev et al. 2013).”
• Illuminating Low Surface Brightness Galaxies with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, background): “1998), with quenched galaxies being found almost exclusively in association with massive host systems (Geha et al. 2012).”
• The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs : a critical test of ΛCDM at the edge of galaxy formation (2016, methodology): “However, as discussed in Geha et al. (2012), to be classified as ‘extremely isolated’ it would need to be found >∼ 4 virial radii away from any nearby larger galaxy.”
• THE SPLASHBACK RADIUS AS A PHYSICAL HALO BOUNDARY AND THE GROWTH OF HALO MASS (2015, background): “…splashback radius, it is unnecessary to invoke special ejection processes to explain the presence of subhalos that have orbited their host at large radii and are deficient in gas or show suppressed star formation (e.g., Balogh et al. 2000; Solanes et al. 2002; Geha et al. 2012; Wetzel et al. 2012).”
• A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2016, unknown): “[449] and [453], blue dots; [448], yellow crosses.”