GRAVITATIONAL HEATING HELPS MAKE MASSIVE GALAXIES RED AND DEAD

By Peter H. Johansson, T. Naab, Jeremiah P. Ostriker. 2009

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We study the thermal formation history of four simulated galaxies that were shown by Naab et al. to reproduce a number of observed properties of elliptical galaxies. The temperature of the gas in the galaxies is steadily increasing with decreasing redshift, although much of the gas has a cooling time shorter than the Hubble time. The gas is being heated and kept hot by gravitational heating processes through the release of potential energy from infalling stellar clumps. The energy is dissipated in supersonic collisions of infalling gas lumps with the ambient gas and through the dynamical capturing of satellite systems causing gravitational wakes that transfer energy to the surrounding gas. Furthermore, dynamical friction from the infalling clumps pushes out dark matter (DM), lowering the central DM density by up to a factor of 2 from z = 3 to z = 0. In galaxies in which the late formation history (z ≲ 2) is dominated by minor merging and accretion, the energy released (E ∼ 5 × 1059 erg) from gravitational feedback is sufficient to form red and dead elliptical galaxies by z ∼ 1 even in the absence of supernova and AGN feedback.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

MORPHOLOGICAL QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION: MAKING EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES RED (2009, background): “…Nucleus (AGN), which could itself be triggered by galaxy mergers (Hopkins et al. 2005; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Cattaneo et al. 2005, 2006, 2009; Johansson et al. 2009a; Schawinski et al. 2009) (iv) and gravitational heating of a gas disk by clumpy mass infall (Dekel & Birnboim 2008) and minor…”
Star formation and mass assembly in high-redshift galaxies (2009, background): “…nuclei and supernovae quenching of cooling flows (Menci et al. 2006; Kitzbichler & White 2007; Bower et al. 2006; Croton et al. 2006; Nagamine et al. 2006; Monaco et al. 2007), gravitational heating (Khochfar & Ostriker 2008; Johansson et al. 2009), or shock heating (Dekel & Birnboim 2006).”
WHAT TURNS GALAXIES OFF? THE DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGIES OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2 FROM CANDELS (2011, background): “…are: the heating of the gaseous halo through virialization of the gas content (Naab et al. 2007; Dekel & Birnboim 2008; Khochfar & Ostriker 2008; Johansson 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 &…”
Galactic star formation and accretion histories from matching galaxies to dark matter haloes (2012, background): “Another effect that may be important for massive galaxies is gravitational heating (Khochfar & Ostriker 2008; Johansson et al. 2009).”
THE TWO PHASES OF GALAXY FORMATION (2010, methodology): “The baryonic mass budget Using similar parameters for zoom simulations has been shown to result in galaxies with reasonable present day properties (Naab et al. 2007, 2009; Johansson et al. 2009, 2010 in prep.).”
The kinematic connection between galaxies and dark matter haloes (2010, background): “The red circles show the simulations of Naab et al. (2007), with parameters taken from Johansson et al. (2009).”
Dark halo response and the stellar initial mass function in early-type and late-type galaxies (2010, background): “• Clumpy accretion/minor mergers: Clumpy accretion of stars or gas in the form of minor mergers can cause halo expansion due to dynamical friction (e.g., El-Zant et al. 2001, Elmegreen et al. 2008; Romano-Diaz et al. 2008; Johansson et al. 2009).”
THE COSMOLOGICAL SIZE AND VELOCITY DISPERSION EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “Using the above simulation parameters for zoom simulations have been shown to result in galaxies with reasonable presentday properties (Naab et al. 2007; Johansson et al. 2009b; Naab et al. 2009; Oser et al. 2010).”
The ATLAS3D project - VII. A new look at the morphology of nearby galaxies: the kinematic morphology-density relation (2011, background): “…the field, or reduce spiral formation via cold accretion (Dekel et al. 2009) in the first place, include quenching produced by galaxy harassment (Moore et al. 1996, 1999), or gravitational heating by minor merging, which may suppress star formation (Khochfar & Ostriker 2008; Johansson et al. 2009).”
THE DENSITY PROFILES OF MASSIVE, RELAXED GALAXY CLUSTERS. I. THE TOTAL DENSITY OVER THREE DECADES IN RADIUS (2012, background): “…dynamical friction with infalling satellites (e.g., El-Zant et al. 2001, 2004; Nipoti et al. 2004; RomanoDı́az et al. 2008; Jardel & Sellwood 2009; Johansson et al. 2009; Del Popolo 2012), feedback from supernovae in lowmass galaxies (Governato et al. 2010; Pontzen & Governato 2012; Brooks &…”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “At larger halo masses, MH >∼ 10 12 M , there is a general consensus that AGN feedback probably plays an important role, although other processes (such as gravitational heating) may contribute as well (Birnboim & Dekel 2011, Johansson et al. 2009b, Khochfar & Ostriker 2008).”
The ATLAS3D project – I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria (2010, background): “…of the gas, caused by the feedback from a central supermassive black hole, supernovae winds, by shock heating of the gas in the most massive halos (Kereš et al. 2005; Dekel & Birnboim 2006) or gravitational gas heating (Naab et al. 2007; Khochfar & Ostriker 2008; Johansson et al. 2009).”
MINOR MERGERS AND THE SIZE EVOLUTION OF ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES (2009, background): “At the same time minor mergers do also play an important role for the gravitational heating of halo gas, thereby suppressing the formation of new stars (Johansson et al. 2009b).”