Quenching vs. Quiescence: forming realistic massive ellipticals with a simple starvation model

Thales A. Gutcke; Andrea V. Macciò; Aaron A. Dutton; Greg S. Stinson

doi:10.1093/mnras/stx005

paper

Quenching vs. Quiescence: forming realistic massive ellipticals with a simple starvation model

arXiv:1701.01130 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx005

Abstract

The decrease in star formation (SF) and the morphological change necessary to produce the $z = 0$ elliptical galaxy population are commonly ascribed to a sudden quenching event, which is able to rid the central galaxy of its cold gas reservoir in a short time. Following this event, the galaxy is able to prevent further SF and stay quiescent via a maintenance mode. We test whether such a quenching event is truly necessary using a simple model of quiescence. In this model, hot gas (all gas above a temperature threshold) in a $\sim 1 0^{12} M_{⊙}$ halo mass galaxy at redshift $z \sim 3$ is prevented from cooling. The cool gas continues to form stars at a decreasing rate and the galaxy stellar mass, morphology, velocity dispersion and position on the color magnitude diagram (CMD) proceed to evolve. By $z = 0$ , the halo mass has grown to $1 0^{13} M_{⊙}$ and the galaxy has attained characteristics typical of an observed $z = 0$ elliptical galaxy. Our model is run in the framework of a cosmological, smooth particle hydrodynamic code which includes SF, early stellar feedback, supernova feedback, metal cooling and metal diffusion. Additionally, we post-process our simulations with a radiative transfer code to create a mock CMD. In contrast to previous assumptions that a pure "fade away" model evolves too slowly to account for the sparsity of galaxies in the "green valley", we demonstrate crossing times of $<$ 1 Gyr. We conclude that no sudden quenching event is necessary to produce such rapid colour transitions.

arXiv comment12 pages, 11 figures, accepted to be published in MNRAS

Quenching vs. Quiescence: forming realistic massive ellipticals with a simple starvation model

Abstract

References in corpus (67)

Cited by in corpus (3)