THE RISE AND FALL OF PASSIVE DISK GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ALONG THE RED SEQUENCE REVEALED BY COSMOS

By K. Bundy, Claudia Scarlata, C. Carollo, Richard S. Ellis, N. Drory, P. Hopkins, Mara Salvato, A. Leauthaud, A. Koekemoer, N. Murray and 6 more. 2009

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The increasing abundance of passive “red-sequence” galaxies since z ∼ 1–2 is mirrored by a coincident rise in the number of galaxies with spheroidal morphologies. In this paper, however, we show in detail, that, the correspondence between galaxy morphology and color is not perfect, providing insight into the physical origin of this evolution. Using the COSMOS survey, we study a significant population of red-sequence galaxies with disk-like morphologies. These passive disks typically have Sa–Sb morphological types with large bulges, but they are not confined to dense environments. They represent nearly one-half of all red-sequence galaxies and dominate at lower masses (≲1010M☉) where they are increasingly disk-dominated. As a function of time, the abundance of passive disks with M* ≲ 1011M☉ increases, but not as fast as red-sequence spheroidals in the same mass range. At higher mass, the passive disk population has declined since z ∼ 1, likely because they transform into spheroidals. Based on these trends, we estimate that as much as 60% of galaxies transitioning onto the red sequence evolve through a passive disk phase. The origin of passive disks therefore has broad implications for our understanding of how star formation shuts down. Because passive disks tend to be more bulge-dominated than their star-forming counterparts, a simple fading of blue disks does not fully explain their origin. We explore the strengths and weaknesses of several more sophisticated explanations, including environmental effects, internal stabilization, and disk regrowth during gas-rich mergers. While previous work has sought to explain color and morphological transformations with a single process, these observations open the way to new insight by highlighting the fact that galaxy evolution may actually proceed through several separate stages.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c73b5066f2d8ea3b4e9f19435c33367bdfd4cf51

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

In Instrumentation

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

Citations in the corpus

• Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, background): “Interestingly, quiescent galaxies at low-z also seem to have bulge+disk morphologies (McGrath et al. 2008; Bundy et al. 2010; van der Wel et al. 2011), suggesting that quenching takes place among galaxies with similar morphologies.”
• Star formation in galaxy mergers with realistic models of stellar feedback and the interstellar medium (2012, background): “…for the existence of ‘realistic’ discs today (Robertson & Bullock 2008; Hopkins et al. 2009e; Stewart et al. 2009), and there appear to be a growing number of observed discs that have undergone recent mergers (Bundy et al. 2009, 2010; Hammer et al. 2009a,b; Puech et al. 2009; Yang et al. 2009).”
• THE BULK OF THE BLACK HOLE GROWTH SINCE z ∼ 1 OCCURS IN A SECULAR UNIVERSE: NO MAJOR MERGER–AGN CONNECTION (2010, background): “Likewise, it has been argued that some gas-rich mergers can lead to the regrowth of the disk (Hopkins et al. 2009; Bundy et al. 2010).”
• Evolution of density profiles in high-z galaxies: compaction and quenching inside-out (2015, background): “On the other hand, quenched disc galaxies have also been found (McGrath et al. 2008; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Bundy et al. 2010; Salim et al. 2012; Bruce et al. 2012; Carollo et al. 2014).”
• zCOSMOS – 10k-bright spectroscopic sample - The bimodality in the galaxy stellar mass function: exploring its evolution with redshift (2009, background): “Recently, Bundy et al. (2009) demonstrated that the colour and morphological transformations should proceed through several separate stages and explored the strengths and weaknesses of several more sophisticated explanations, including environmental effects, internal stabilization, and disc…”
• NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR-TO-DARK MATTER CONNECTION: A COMBINED ANALYSIS OF GALAXY–GALAXY LENSING, CLUSTERING, AND STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS FROM z = 0.2 to z = 1 (2011, methodology): “We have found that the mass estimates in Bundy et al. (2010) agree with those of Drory et al. (2009) within the expected uncertainties (i.e., <0.2 dex).”
• How do minor mergers promote inside-out growth of ellipticals, transforming the size, density profile and dark matter fraction? (2012, background): “…some of which are most likely the descendants of compact ’red and dead’ flattened high-redshift galaxies with lower Sersic indices (van Dokkum et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2009; Bundy et al. 2010; Wuyts et al. 2010; Buitrago et al. 2011; Wuyts 2011; van der Wel et al. 2011; Szomoru et al. 2012).”
• The DEEP3 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the impact of environment on the size evolution of massive early-type galaxies at intermediate redshift (2011, background): “…magnitudes/lower stellar mass, reddened star-forming galaxies comprise a significant portion of the red galaxy population (e.g. Lotz et al. 2008; Bundy et al. 2010; Cheng et al. 2011), and as many studies of environment and clustering at intermediate redshift have shown the star-forming…”
• CONSTRAINING THE LOW-MASS SLOPE OF THE STAR FORMATION SEQUENCE AT 0.5 < z < 2.5 (2014, background): “Wuyts et al. 2007; Williams et al. 2009; Bundy et al. 2010; Cardamone et al. 2010; Whitaker et al. 2011; Brammer et al. 2011; Patel et al. 2012); quiescent galaxies have strong Balmer/ 4000 Å breaks, characterized by red rest-frame U–”
• Galaxy Zoo: Passive Red Spirals . (2009, background): “Bundy et al. (2010) have studied the redshift evolution of red sequence galaxies with disk like components in COSMOS and use it to estimate that as many as 60% of spiral galaxies must pass through this phase on the way to the red sequence - making it an important evolutionary step.”
• THE EMISSION BY DUST AND STARS OF NEARBY GALAXIES IN THE HERSCHEL KINGFISH SURVEY (2011, background): “…resemble past stages of present-day early-types; that is, it assumes that the growth of galaxy disks precedes that of bulges (e.g., Bournaud et al. 2009; Ceverino et al. 2010), although there is evidence that this assumption may be too simplistic (e.g., MacArthur et al. 2009; Bundy et al. 2010).”
• The Horizon-AGN Simulation: Morphological Diversity of Galaxies ,Promoted by AGN Feedback (2016, background): “Observations of galaxies establish that a wide variety of morphological types is witnessed at all times in the Universe, from discs to ellipticals and irregular galaxies, although morphologies strongly depend on the galaxy mass (e.g. Conselice 2006; Ilbert et al. 2010; Bundy et al. 2010).”
• NEWLY QUENCHED GALAXIES AS THE CAUSE FOR THE APPARENT EVOLUTION IN AVERAGE SIZE OF THE POPULATION (2013, background): “…quenched and star-forming classified galaxies in the 0.2 < z < 0.4 and 0.8 < z < 1.0 redshift bins, respectively; star-forming and quenched galaxies are known to effectively separate in different regions in this diagnostic plane (e.g. Williams et al. 2009, Brammer et al. 2009; Bundy et al. 2010).”
• WHAT TURNS GALAXIES OFF? THE DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGIES OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2 FROM CANDELS (2011, background): “Bundy et al. (2010) have explored this issue atz< 1.2, finding that a large fraction of quiescent galaxies have disks in addition to significant bulge components; indeed, the existence of S0s and disky ellipticals in all environments is well-known (see, e.g., van den Bergh 2009, and references…”
• Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, background): “A fourth tension arises from the trend of higher active fractions for more massive galaxies found by Xue et al. (2010) and Bundy et al. (2010).”
• THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY (2012, background): “…central stellar mass densities in quenched galaxies have been inferred in previous work from higher integrated Sérsic values (Weiner et al. 2005; Bundy et al. 2010), but photometric data by themselves do not rule out a simple fading picture in which disks decline in brightness, permitting an…”
• CANDELS: CONSTRAINING THE AGN–MERGER CONNECTION WITH HOST MORPHOLOGIES AT z ∼ 2 (2011, background): “Numerical simulations have shown that disks can reform after a merger if the interacting systems are gas-rich (Robertson et al. 2006; Bundy et al. 2010), although it has been argued that such interactions are not conducive to the fueling of SMBHs (Hopkins & Hernquist 2009).”