BUDHIES II: a phase-space view of H i gas stripping and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies

By Y. Jaffé, Rory J. E. Smith, G. Candlish, B. Poggianti, Y. Sheen, Marc A. W. Verheijen. 2015

164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the effect of ram-pressure from the intracluster medium on the stripping of H I gas in galaxies in a massive, relaxed, X-ray bright, galaxy cluster at z = 0.2 from the Blind Ultra Deep H I Environmental Survey (BUDHIES). We use cosmological simulations, and velocity versus position phase-space diagrams to infer the orbital histories of the cluster galaxies. In particular, we embed a simple analytical description of ram-pressure stripping in the simulations to identify the regions in phase-space where galaxies are more likely to have been sufficiently stripped of their H I gas to fall below the detection limit of our survey. We find a striking agreement between the model predictions and the observed location of H I-detected and non-detected blue (late-type) galaxies in phase-space, strongly implying that ram-pressure plays a key role in the gas removal from galaxies, and that this can happen during their first infall into the cluster. However, we also find a significant number of gas-poor, red (early-type) galaxies in the infall region of the cluster that cannot easily be explained with our model of ram-pressure stripping alone. We discuss different possible additional mechanisms that could be at play, including the pre-processing of galaxies in their previous environment. Our results are strengthened by the distribution of galaxy colours (optical and UV) in phase-space, that suggests that after a (gas-rich) field galaxy falls into the cluster, it will lose its gas via ram-pressure stripping, and as it settles into the cluster, its star formation will decay until it is completely quenched. Finally, this work demonstrates the utility of phase-space diagrams to analyse the physical processes driving the evolution of cluster galaxies, in particular H I gas stripping.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e304f6e0a9863567a914dd654b1a8bcd9d716161

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. M. Moran
2. E. Egami
3. Y. Sheen
4. J. Fritz
5. A. Cava
6. A. Biviano
7. M. Pereira
8. Graham P. Smith

In Instrumentation

1. S. M. Moran
2. Y. Sheen
3. J. Fritz
4. E. Egami
5. A. Cava
6. A. Biviano
7. Graham P. Smith
8. B. Poggianti

Citations in the corpus

• GASP. I. Gas Stripping Phenomena in Galaxies with MUSE (2017, methodology): “Ram-pressure stripping calculations are obtained both with analytical methods and hydrodynamical simulations (e.g., Gunn & Gott 1972; Jaffé et al. 2015, and references above).”
• LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “…of the clusters themselves (e.g., Moss & Dickens 1977; Binggeli et al. 1987; Biviano et al. 1997, 2013; Diaferio & Geller 1997; Diaferio 1999; Biviano & Katgert 2004; Gill et al. 2005; Serra et al. 2011; Mahajan et al. 2011; Hernández-Fernández et al. 2014; Muzzin et al. 2014; Jaffé et al. 2015).”