The global and radial stellar mass assembly of Milky Way-sized galaxies

Abstract

We study the global and radial stellar mass assembly of eight zoomed-in MW-sized galaxies produced in Hydrodynamics cosmological simulations. The disk-dominated galaxies (4) show a fast initial stellar mass growth in the innermost parts, driven mostly by in-situ SF, but since $z\sim 2-1$ the SF enters in a long-term quenching phase. The outer regions follow this trend but more gentle as more external they are. As the result, the radial stellar mass growth is highly inside-out due to both the inside-out structural growth and inside-out SF quenching. The half-mass radius evolves fast; for instance, $R_{0.5}$($z=1$)$<0.5$$R_{0.5}$($z=0$). Two other runs resemble lenticular galaxies. One shows also a pronounced inside-out growth and the other one presents a nearly uniform radial mass assembly. The other two galaxies suffered late major mergers. Their normalized radial mass growth histories (MGHs) are nearly close among them but with periods of outside-in assembly during or after the mergers. For all the simulations, the archaeological radial MGHs calculated from the $z=0$ stellar-particles age distribution are similar to the current MGHs, which evidences that the mass assembly by ex-situ stars and the radial mass transport do not change significantly their radial mass distributions. Our results agree qualitatively with observational inferences from the fossil record method applied to a survey of local galaxies and from look-back observations of progenitors of MW-sized galaxies. However, the inside-out growth mode is more pronounced and the $R_{0.5}$ growth is faster in simulations than in observational inferences.

23 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Minor corrections and more references added. The discussion was extended in section 6.1

References in corpus (34)

• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• A Semi-Analytic Model for the Co-evolution of Galaxies, Black Holes, and Active Galactic Nuclei
• Star Formation and Feedback in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations--I. Isolated Galaxies
• Compaction and Quenching of High-z Galaxies in Cosmological Simulations: Blue and Red Nuggets
• The Auriga Project: the properties and formation mechanisms of disc galaxies across cosmic time
• Riding the Spiral Waves: Implications of Stellar Migration for the Properties of Galactic Disks
• The Data Reduction Pipeline for the SDSS-IV MaNGA IFU Galaxy Survey
• Bulge Formation by the Coalescence of Giant Clumps in Primordial Disk Galaxies
• Reconstructing the Subsurface Three-Dimensional Magnetic Structure of A Solar Active Region Using SDO/HMI Observations
• Effects of Supernova Feedback on the Formation of Galaxy Disks
• The Galaxy-Halo Connection Over The Last 13.3 Gyrs
• Specific SFR profiles in nearby spiral galaxies: quantifying the inside-out formation of disks
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Spatially resolved star formation histories in galaxies as a function of galaxy mass and type
• The Structure and Dynamical Evolution of the Stellar Disk of a Simulated Milky Way-Mass Galaxy
• ZFOURGE/CANDELS: On the Evolution of M* Galaxy Progenitors from z=3 to 0.5
• Why stellar feedback promotes disc formation in simulated galaxies
• SDSS IV MaNGA: The global and local stellar mass assemby histories of galaxies
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: the chemical structure of the Galactic discs from the first internal data release
• On the Origin of Exponential Galaxy Disks
• The frequency and nature of `cloud-cloud collisions' in galaxies
• The GALEX Arecibo SDSS survey: III. Evidence for the Inside-Out Formation of Galactic Disks
• P-MaNGA: Gradients in Recent Star Formation Histories as Diagnostics for Galaxy Growth and Death
• The spatially resolved star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Cosmic time scales
• Chemical gradients in the Milky Way from the RAVE data. II. Giant stars
• Galaxy Size Problem at z=3: Simulated Galaxies Are Too Small
• Gas accretion from minor mergers in local spiral galaxies
• Radial Flows and Angular Momentum Conservation in Galactic Chemical Evolution
• From outside-in to inside-out: galaxy assembly mode depends on stellar mass
• Galaxy Zoo: The interplay of quenching mechanisms in the group environment
• The diverse formation histories of simulated disc galaxies
• Cosmological simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Galaxy colour gradients versus colour, structure and luminosity
• Inside-out growth or inside-out quenching? clues from colour gradients of local galaxies

Cited by in corpus (15)

• The Inside-out Growth of the Galactic Disk
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Effects of Morphology in the global and local Star Formation Main Sequences
• SDSS IV MaNGA - An archaeological view of the Cosmic Star Formation History
• Spirals in galaxies
• Optical Integral Field Spectroscopy observations applied to simulated galaxies: Testing the fossil record method
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Spatially resolved star-formation histories and the connection to galaxy physical properties
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: global and local stellar population properties of elliptical galaxies
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Excavating the fossil record of stellar populations in spiral galaxies
• The evolution of radial gradients of MaNGA quiescent elliptical galaxies: inside-out quenching or outer mass growth?
• AGN and Star-Formation Properties of Inside-out Assembled Galaxy Candidates at z<0.1
• The differences between mass- and light-derived structural parameters over time for MaNGA Elliptical galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Using concentrated star-formation and stellar population ages to understand environmental quenching
• No Evolution in the Half-mass Radius of Milky Way-type Galaxies over the Last 10 Gyr
• Improved SED-Fitting Assumptions Result in Inside-Out Quenching at $z\sim 0.5$ and Quenching at All Radii Simultaneously at $z\sim 1$
• Structural evolution of quiescent galaxies at intermediate redshifts at UV and red rest-frame wavelengths