What has quenched the massive spiral galaxies?

Abstract

Quenched massive spiral galaxies have attracted great attention recently, as more data is available to constrain their environment and cold gas content. However, the quenching mechanism is still uncertain, as it depends on the mass range and baryon budget of the galaxy. In this letter, we report the identification of a rare population of very massive, quenched spiral galaxies with stellar mass $\gtrsim 10^{11}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and halo mass $\gtrsim 10^{13}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at redshift $z\sim 0.1$. Our CO observations using the IRAM-30m telescope show that these galaxies contain only a small amount of molecular gas. Similar galaxies are also seen in the state-of-the-art semi-analytical models and hydro-dynamical simulations. It is found from these theoretical models that these quenched spiral galaxies harbor massive black holes, suggesting that feedback from the central black holes has quenched these spiral galaxies. This quenching mechanism seems to challenge the popular scenario of the co-evolution between massive black holes and massive bulges.

5 papes, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Star Formation and Quenching of Central Galaxies from Stacked HI Measurements
• Mass and Environment as Drivers of Galaxy Evolution. IV. On the Quenching of Massive Central Disk Galaxies in The Local Universe
• Quenching of Massive Disk Galaxies in the IllustrisTNG Simulation
• A giant central red disk galaxy at redshift $z=0.76$: challenge to theories of galaxy formation