Quenching timescales of dwarf satellites around Milky Way-mass hosts

Abstract

Observations of the low-mass satellites in the Local Group have shown high fractions of gas-poor, quiescent galaxies relative to isolated dwarfs, implying that the host halo environment plays an important role in the quenching of dwarf galaxies. In this work, we present measurements of the quenched fractions and quenching timescales of dwarf satellite galaxies in the DC Justice League suite of 4 high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass halos. We show that these simulations accurately reproduce the satellite luminosity functions of observed nearby galaxies, as well as the variation in satellite quenched fractions from $M_{\ast }\sim 10^5$ solar masses to $10^{10}$ solar masses. We then trace the histories of satellite galaxies back to $z\sim 15$, and find that many satellites with $M_{\ast }\sim 10^{6-8}$ solar masses quench within 2 Gyr of infall into the host halo, while others in the same mass range remain star-forming for as long as 5 Gyr. We show that this scatter can be explained by the satellite's gas mass and the ram pressure it feels at infall. Finally, we identify a characteristic stellar mass scale of $10^8$ solar masses above which infalling satellites are largely resistant to rapid environmental quenching.

16 pages, 7 figures, accepted to ApJ

References in corpus (19)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Star Formation and Feedback in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations--I. Isolated Galaxies
• Updated Nearby Galaxy Catalog
• The Quenching of the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies in the Reionization Era
• A Superbubble Feedback Model for Galaxy Simulations
• The SAGA Survey. II. Building a Statistical Sample of Satellite Systems around Milky Way-like Galaxies
• The Star Formation Histories of Local Group Dwarf Galaxies II. Searching For Signatures of Reionization
• Ultra-faint dwarfs in a Milky Way context: Introducing the Mint Condition DC Justice League Simulations
• Star formation quenching in simulated group and cluster galaxies: When, how, and why?
• The Dearth of Neutral Hydrogen in Galactic Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• The Star Formation Histories of Local Group Dwarf Galaxies III. Characterizing Quenching in Low-Mass Galaxies
• Self-Consistent Modeling of Reionization in Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations
• Overconsumption, outflows and the quenching of satellite galaxies
• Orbital masses of nearby luminous galaxies
• The Mass Dependence of Dwarf Satellite Galaxy Quenching
• Radial Distributions of Dwarf Satellite Systems in the Local Volume
• The Effects of Ram-pressure Stripping and Supernova Winds on the Tidal Stirring of Disky Dwarfs: Enhanced Transformation into Dwarf Spheroidals
• d1005+68: A New Faint Dwarf Galaxy in the M81 Group
• Three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the supernovae-driven gas loss in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Ursa Minor

Cited by in corpus (38)

• APOGEE Chemical Abundance Patterns of the Massive Milky Way Satellites
• ELVES I: Structures of Dwarf Satellites of MW-like Galaxies; Morphology, Scaling Relations, and Intrinsic Shapes
• Quantifying scatter in galaxy formation at the lowest masses
• The Origins of Off-Centre Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Extinguishing the FIRE: environmental quenching of satellite galaxies around Milky Way-mass hosts in simulations
• The SAGA Survey. III. A Census of 101 Satellite Systems around Milky Way-mass Galaxies
• The stellar metallicity gradients of Local Group dwarf galaxies
• Pericentric passage-driven star formation in satellite galaxies and their hosts: CLUES from Local Group simulations
• Satellites of Milky Way- and M31-like galaxies with TNG50: quenched fractions, gas content, and star formation histories
• Pegasus W: An Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Outside the Halo of M31 Not Quenched by Reionization
• The effects of LMC-mass environments on their dwarf satellite galaxies in the FIRE simulations
• The SAGA Survey. IV. The Star Formation Properties of 101 Satellite Systems around Milky Way-mass Galaxies
• ELVES III: Environmental Quenching by Milky Way-Mass Hosts
• How cosmological merger histories shape the diversity of stellar haloes
• UniverseMachine: Predicting Galaxy Star Formation over Seven Decades of Halo Mass with Zoom-in Simulations
• The SAMI-Fornax Dwarfs Survey III: Evolution of [$\alpha$/Fe] in dwarfs, from Galaxy Clusters to the Local Group
• A jolt to the system: ram pressure on low-mass galaxies in simulations of the Local Group
• Discovery of a red backsplash galaxy candidate near M81
• The SAGA Survey. V. Modeling Satellite Systems around Milky Way-mass Galaxies with Updated UniverseMachine
• It's a Breeze: The Circumgalactic Medium of a Dwarf Galaxy is Easy to Strip
• The Quenched Satellite Population Around Milky Way Analogs
• Testable predictions of outside-in age gradients in dwarf galaxies of all types
• Colour and infall time distributions of satellite galaxies in simulated Milky-Way analogs
• HI Properties of Satellite Galaxies around Local Volume Hosts
• The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project VII: Satellite quenching in zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-mass halo
• Beyond Ultra-diffuse Galaxies. II. Environmental Quenching of Mass-Size Outliers among the Satellites of Milky Way Analogs
• Determining Satellite Infall Times Using Machine Learning
• Formation of Transitional cE/UCD Galaxies through Massive/Dwarf Disc Galaxy Mergers
• Where Did the Outskirts Go? Outer Stellar Haloes as a Sensitive Probe of Supernova Feedback
• Cosmological Simulations of Stellar Halos with Gaia Sausage-Enceladus Analogues: Two Sausages, One Bun?
• Shedding light on the star formation rate-halo accretion rate connection and halo quenching mechanism via DECODE, the Discrete statistical sEmi-empiriCal mODEl
• Survivors and Zombies: The Quenching and Disruption of Satellites around Milky Way Analogs
• Devouring The Centaurus A Satellites: Modeling Dwarf Galaxies with Galacticus
• Exploring effects of IMF sampling and SN feedback injection on star formation and metallicity in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
• Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals in Milky Way Galaxies
• The PARADIGM project II: The lifetimes and quenching of satellites in Milky Way-mass haloes
• Quenching of satellite galaxies of Milky Way analogues: reconciling theory and observations
• The Exploration of Local VolumE Satellites (ELVES) Survey: A Nearly Volume-Limited Sample of Nearby Dwarf Satellite Systems