Investigating The Growing Population of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at Cosmic Noon

Abstract

We explore the buildup of quiescent galaxies using a sample of 28,469 massive ($M_{\star }\ge 10^{11}$M${}_{\odot }$) galaxies at redshifts $1.5<z<3.0$, drawn from a 17.5 deg${}^2$ area (0.33 Gpc${}^3$ comoving volume at these redshifts). This allows for a robust study of the quiescent fraction as a function of mass at $1.5<z<3.0$ with a sample $\sim$40 times larger at log($M_{\star }$/${\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$)$\ge 11.5$ than previous studies. We derive the quiescent fraction using three methods: specific star-formation rate, distance from the main sequence, and UVJ color-color selection. All three methods give similar values at $1.5<z<2.0$, however the results differ by up to a factor of two at $2.0<z<3.0$. At redshifts $1.5<z<3.0$ the quiescent fraction increases as a function of stellar mass. By $z=2$, only 3.3 Gyr after the Big Bang, the universe has quenched $\sim$25% of $M_{\star }=10^{11}$M${}_{\odot }$ galaxies and $\sim$45% of $M_{\star }=10^{12}$M${}_{\odot }$ galaxies. We discuss physical mechanisms across a range of epochs and environments that could explain our results. We compare our results with predictions from hydrodynamical simulations SIMBA and IllustrisTNG and semi-analytic models (SAMs) SAG, SAGE, and Galacticus. The quiescent fraction from IllustrisTNG is higher than our empirical result by a factor of $2-5$, while those from SIMBA and the three SAMs are lower by a factor of $1.5-10$ at $1.5<z<3.0$.

22 pages, 14 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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