WHAT TURNS GALAXIES OFF? THE DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGIES OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2 FROM CANDELS

By Eric F. Bell, A. van der Wel, C. Papovich, D. Kocevski, J. Lotz, D. H. Mcintosh, J. Kartaltepe, S. Faber, H. Ferguson, A. Koekemoer and 14 more. 2011

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use HST/WFC3 imaging from the CANDELS Multi-Cycle Treasury Survey, in conjunction with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, to explore the evolution of galactic structure for galaxies with stellar masses >3 × 1010 M☉ from z = 2.2 to the present epoch, a time span of 10 Gyr. We explore the relationship between rest-frame optical color, stellar mass, star formation activity, and galaxy structure. We confirm the dramatic increase from z = 2.2 to the present day in the number density of non-star-forming galaxies above 3 × 1010 M☉ reported by others. We further find that the vast majority of these quiescent systems have concentrated light profiles, as parameterized by the Sérsic index, and the population of concentrated galaxies grows similarly rapidly. We examine the joint distribution of star formation activity, Sérsic index, stellar mass, inferred velocity dispersion, and stellar surface density. Quiescence correlates poorly with stellar mass at all z < 2.2. Quiescence correlates well with Sérsic index at all redshifts. Quiescence correlates well with “velocity dispersion” and stellar surface density at z > 1.3, and somewhat less well at lower redshifts. Yet, there is significant scatter between quiescence and galaxy structure: while the vast majority of quiescent galaxies have prominent bulges, many of them have significant disks, and a number of bulge-dominated galaxies have significant star formation. Noting the rarity of quiescent galaxies without prominent bulges, we argue that a prominent bulge (and perhaps, by association, a supermassive black hole) is an important condition for quenching star formation on galactic scales over the last 10 Gyr, in qualitative agreement with the active galactic nucleus feedback paradigm.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb68fe4a0d7fa1de23684e7d04a1b900b4a729c7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Cool Gas in High-Redshift Galaxies (2013, background): “…abound: shock heating of in–falling gas (Kereš et al. 2005, Dekel & Birnboim 2006), feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN, Croton et al. 2006; Bell et al. 2012), motivated by ubiquitously observed super–massive black holes in massive galaxies and the coincidence of the peak of QSO and…”
3D-HST+CANDELS: THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY SIZE–MASS DISTRIBUTION SINCE z = 3 (2014, unknown): “…or not the small late-type galaxies represent a transitional phase, the central idea in the formation of early-type galaxies is that the formation of an early-type galaxy occurs requires the formation of a concentrated stellar body with a high density (e.g., Franx et al. 2008; Bell et al. 2012).”
Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, unknown): “2009, Cameron et al. 2009, Cameron & Driver 2009, Peng et al. 2010, Wuyts et al. 2011, Peng et al. 2012, Bell et al. 2012, Cheung et al. 2012, Barro et al. 2013, Fang et al. 2013, Mendel et al. 2013, and Woo et al. 2013, Omand et al. 2014).”
The ATLAS3D project – XX. Mass–size and mass–σ distributions of early-type galaxies: bulge fraction drives kinematics, mass-to-light ratio, molecular gas fraction and stellar initial mass function (2012, methodology): “A similar scenario was recently proposed by Bell et al. (2012) to interpret the relationship between rest-frame optical colour, stellar mass, star formation activity and galaxy structure from z ≈ 2 to the present day.”
FORMING COMPACT MASSIVE GALAXIES (2015, unknown): “Following many other studies (e.g., Franx et al. 2008; Bell et al. 2012), we assume that quenching occurs when galaxies reach a threshold in either velocity dispersion or physical density.”
The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field: Compact Bulges, and the Rise and Fall of Massive Disks (2012, background): “…while van der Wel et al. (2011) and McLure et al. (2012) both conclude that 50 per cent of passive objects at these redshifts are disc dominated, Bell et al. (2012) find that the key parameter which correlates best with quiescence at these redshifts is still Sérsic index, with the presence of…”
A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES (2013, background): “It has been argued that Sersic index is the parameter that best discriminates between star-forming and quiescent galaxies (Bell et al. 2012).”
Evolution of density profiles in high-z galaxies: compaction and quenching inside-out (2015, unknown): “…Mendel et al. 2013; Cibinel et al. 2013a; Fang et al. 2013; Schawinski et al. 2014; Omand et al. 2014; Bluck et al. 2014; Woo et al. 2015) and at high-z (Wuyts et al. 2011, 2012; Bell et al. 2012; Cheung et al. 2012; Szomoru et al. 2012; Barro et al. 2013; Lang et al. 2014; Tacchella et al. 2015c).”
SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES AS PROGENITORS OF COMPACT QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2014, background): “…include a transformation of their surface brightness profiles which increase their Sersic indices, as surface brightness profiles of quiescent galaxies at z ∼ 2 are more centrally concentrated (Wuyts et al. 2011; Szomoru et al. 2011; Bell et al. 2012), e.g. the sample of K13 has 〈n〉 = 4.0± 0.1.”
BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “…previous reports that the inner stellar mass density is better related to the star formation history than the total stellar mass (Franx et al. 2008; Bell et al. 2012), as inferred from rest-optical imaging of smaller samples of high-redshift galaxies (see Kauffmann et al. 2003 and Fang et al. 2013…”
Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, background): “It is well established that morphological properties, such as size, concentration, and clumpiness, correlate with properties related to star formation activity, such as sSFR, gas fraction, and colour (Strateva et al. 2001; Wuyts et al. 2011; Bell et al. 2012).”
The Evolution of Galaxy Structure Over Cosmic Time (2014, background): “Observationally we also know that galaxies which are concentrated, with for example a high Sérsic profile, are more likely to be quenched (e.g., Bell et al. 2012; Fan et al. 2013).”
A SUBSTANTIAL POPULATION OF MASSIVE QUIESCENT GALAXIES AT z ∼ 4 FROM ZFOURGE (2013, methodology): “From here onward we adopt as the operational definition of “quiescent” galaxies that satisfy the UVJ criterium and are not detected in the far-IR (e.g., Bell et al. 2012).”
PHIBSS: MOLECULAR GAS CONTENT AND SCALING RELATIONS IN z ∼ 1–3 MASSIVE, MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2012, background): “This quenching is not yet understood, but evidence is accumulating that star formation, stellar mass or mass surface density thresholds may all play important roles (Kauffmann et al. 2003, 2012, Peng et al. 2010, Bell et al. 2012).”
THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY (2012, background): “Recently, Wuyts et al. (2011) and Bell et al. (2012) found that the correlation between quenching andn was in place since at leastz∼ 2.5.”
The formation of massive, compact galaxies at z = 2 in the Illustris simulation (2014, background): “E-mail: swellons@cfa.harvard.edu † Hubble Fellow et al. 2008; Franx et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2008, 2014; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Cassata et al. 2011; Damjanov et al. 2011; Szomoru et al. 2011; Bell et al. 2012).”