Ram-pressure stripping of halo gas in disc galaxies: implications for galactic star formation in different environments

By Kenji Bekki. 2009

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We numerically investigate the evolution of gaseous haloes around disc galaxies in different environments, ranging from small groups to rich clusters, in order to understand galaxy evolution in these environments. Our simulations self-consistently incorporate the effects of ram pressure of the intergalactic medium (IGM) on the disc and halo gas of galaxies and hydrodynamical interaction between disc and halo gas, so that the mass fractions of halo gas stripped by ram pressure of the IGM (F strip ) can be better estimated. We mainly investigate how F strip depends on the total masses of the host environments (M host ), galactic masses (M gal ), densities and temperature of the IGM (T IGM and ρ IGM , respectively), the relative velocities between the IGM and galaxies (V r ) and the physical properties of discs (e.g. gas mass fraction). We find that typically 60-80 per cent of halo gas can be efficiently stripped from Milky-Way-type disc galaxies by ram pressure in clusters with M host ∼10 14 M ☉ . We also find that F strip depends on M host such that F strip is higher for larger M host . Furthermore, it is found that F strip can be higher in disc galaxies with smaller M gal for a given environment. Our simulations demonstrate that the presence of disc gas can suppress ram-pressure stripping of halo gas, owing to hydrodynamical interaction between halo and disc gas. Ram-pressure stripping of halo gas is found to be efficient (i.e. F strip > 0.5) even in small and/or compact groups, if ρ IGM ∼ 10 5 M ☉ kpc -3 and V r ∼ 400kms -1 . Based on the derived radial distributions of the remaining halo gas after ram-pressure stripping, we propose that the truncation of star formation after halo-gas stripping can occur from the outside in in disc galaxies. We suggest that although the gradual truncation of star formation in disc galaxies can occur in groups, this proceeds less rapidly in comparison with cluster environments. We also suggest that low-mass galaxies are likely to truncate their star formation more rapidly, owing to more efficient halo-gas stripping in groups and clusters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc0c8c43442f301b7951fda322f0134faadad23a

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Citations in the corpus

OVERVIEW OF THE SDSS-IV MaNGA SURVEY: MAPPING NEARBY GALAXIES AT APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY (2014, background): “In these environments, internal gas supplies may be stripped away (e.g., rampressure stripping, see Moran et al. 2007) or prevented from replenishing (e.g., “starvation”, McCarthy et al. 2008; Bekki 2009).”
Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters (2016, background): “Until relatively recently, much of the success in this area came from non-cosmological, high-resolution simulations of well-resolved galaxies (e.g. Marcolini, Brighenti & D’Ercole 2003; Mayer et al. 2006, 2007; Bekki 2009; Tonnesen & Bryan 2009, 2010).”
THE RISE AND FALL OF PASSIVE DISK GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ALONG THE RED SEQUENCE REVEALED BY COSMOS (2009, background): “…can be important as very weak ram pressure (2–3 orders of magnitude weaker than in cluster cores) can cause “strangulation” or “starvation” via stripping of the galaxy’s hot gas halo, thereby shutting off a potential fuel source for subsequent star formation (see McCarthy et al. 2008; Bekki 2009).”
The Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (2011, background): “Simulations suggest that this process can be efficient at removing halo gas, even in small and/or compact groups (Bekki 2009; McCarthy et al. 2008), but there is little direct experimental evidence that this is the case.”
The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Instrument specification and target selection (2014, background): “In denser environments processes such as ram-pressure stripping or strangulation can truncate star formation in the outer regions of a galaxy, or across the disk respectively (e.g. Bekki 2009; Lewis et al. 2002) or induce star formation (e.g. Bekki 2014).”