MASS AND ENVIRONMENT AS DRIVERS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION. II. THE QUENCHING OF SATELLITE GALAXIES AS THE ORIGIN OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

By Yingjie Peng, S. Lilly, A. Renzini, M. Carollo. 2011

276 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We extend the phenomenological study of the evolving galaxy population of Peng et al. (2010) to the central/satellite dichotomy in Yang et al. Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) groups. We find that satellite galaxies are responsible for all the environmental effects in our earlier work. The fraction of centrals that are red does not depend on their environment but only on their stellar masses, whereas that of the satellites depends on both. We define a relative satellite quenching efficiency εsat, which is the fraction of blue centrals that are quenched upon becoming the satellite of another galaxy. This is shown to be independent of stellar mass, but to depend strongly on local overdensity, δ, ranging between 0.2 and at least 0.8. The red fraction of satellites correlate much better with the local overdensity δ, a measure of location within the group, than with the richness of the group, i.e., dark matter halo mass. This, and the fact that satellite quenching depends on local density and not on either the stellar mass of the galaxy or the dark matter halo mass, gives clues as to the nature of the satellite-quenching process. We furthermore show that the action of mass quenching on satellite galaxies is also independent of the dark matter mass of the parent halo. We then apply the Peng et al. approach to predict the mass functions of central and satellite galaxies, split into passive and active galaxies, and show that these match very well the observed mass functions from SDSS, further strengthening the validity of this phenomenological approach. We highlight the fact that the observed M* is exactly the same for the star-forming centrals and satellites and the observed M* for the star-forming satellites is independent of halo mass above 1012 M☉, which emphasizes the universality of the mass-quenching process that we identified in Peng et al. Post-quenching merging modifies the mass function of the central galaxies but can increase the mass of typical centrals by only about 25%.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d49f5ce693d0b21192fb35eb160c22f497eaab26

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Citations in the corpus

The size evolution of star-forming and quenched galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, background): “This satellite fraction is, however, likely too high (Peng et al. 2012), as the simulation probably misses some low-mass quenched central galaxies (Nelson et al. 2017; Springel et al. 2017).”
Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses (2014, unknown): “…II, our new assumptions not only reproduce the observed abundances of galaxies as a function of stellar mass, star-formation rate and redshift, but also the environmental dependences and quenching time-scales inferred from observations (Peng et al. 2010, 2012; Wetzel et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2014).”
Inferring the star formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with bagpipes: evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms (2017, background): “This process is also capable of causing very rapid quenching of star formation, and is thought to to give rise to the environmental dependence of the galaxy colour bimodality (e.g. Peng et al. 2012).”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, background): “Indeed, Tinker et al. (2011, 2017) argue that no correlations exist between low-mass galaxy assembly and quenching except for satellite and backsplash galaxies (as in Peng et al. 2010, 2012).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “Peng et al. (2012) showed that when SDSS galaxies were identified as “satellites” or “centrals” using a group catalog, the fraction of quiescent centrals depended only on stellar mass, while the fraction of quiescent satellites depended on both mass and environment.”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, background): “…are stable across different environments of void, field, and groups and clusters (i.e., halo masses), while the red fraction fred increases continuously with M∗ and the local density of the environment, i.e., the so-called “mass” and “environmental” quenching, respectively (Peng et al. 2012).”
Tracing the cosmic growth of supermassive black holes to z ∼ 3 with Herschel (2014, background): “Previous studies have highlighted the presence of a tight correlation between stellar mass and SFR in the local Universe (e.g. Peng et al. 2010, 2012).”
The dark side of galaxy colour (2013, methodology): “Peng et al. (2010, 2012) begins with a minimal set of phenomenological observations based on zCOSMOS data (Lilly et al. 2007) and apply a set of continuity equations to the evolution of the number of red and blue galaxies in order to connect galaxy properties to the dark matter halos hosting them…”
Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, methodology): “Further, Peng et al. (2010, 2012) construct a phenomenological model, which fits the observed data extremely well; however, this does not necessarily reveal the base physical process(es) which cause the transition of galaxies from the blue cloud (of actively star forming main sequence galaxies) to…”
NEWLY QUENCHED GALAXIES AS THE CAUSE FOR THE APPARENT EVOLUTION IN AVERAGE SIZE OF THE POPULATION (2013, methodology): “Analysis of the mass functions of SDSS central and satellite galaxies in Peng et al. (2012) refines these estimates to an average postquenching mass increase of ∼ 25% for typical central galaxies, and a negligible increase for satellite galaxies.”
Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters (2016, background): “…is that satellites infalling into the halo have undergone a distinct evolutionary history from that of their central, as well as being the bulk of the group and cluster populations (e.g. van den Bosch et al. 2008; Kimm et al. 2009; Peng et al. 2012; Wetzel, Tinker & Conroy 2012; Woo et al. 2013).”
A TURNOVER IN THE GALAXY MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR FORMATION AT M* ∼ 1010 M☉ FOR REDSHIFTS z < 1.3 (2015, background): “…et al. 2005), gravitational heating of the surrounding intracluster medium (Khochfar & Ostriker 2008), changes in the mode of gas accretion onto galaxies (Kereš et al. 2005; Birnboim et al. 2007; Nelson et al. 2013), or gas removal or strangulation in dense environments (Peng et al. 2010, 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): “The weak evolution in M∗ suggests that the physical mechanism(s) responsible for the exponential cutoff in the SMF has a mass scale that is independent of redshift (see also Peng et al. 2010, 2012).”