Quenching and the UVJ diagram in the SIMBA cosmological simulation

Abstract

Over the past decade, rest-frame color-color diagrams have become popular tools for selecting quiescent galaxies at high redshift, breaking the color degeneracy between quiescent and dust-reddened star-forming galaxies. In this work, we study one such color-color selection tool -- the rest-frame $U-V$ vs. $V-J$ diagram -- by employing mock observations of cosmological galaxy formation simulations. In particular, we conduct numerical experiments assessing both trends in galaxy properties in UVJ space and the color-color evolution of massive galaxies as they quench at redshifts $z\sim 1$--$2$. We find that our models broadly reproduce the observed UVJ diagram at $z=1$--$2$, including (for the first time in a cosmological simulation) reproducing the population of extremely dust-reddened galaxies in the top right of the UVJ diagram. However, our models primarily populate this region with low-mass galaxies and do not produce as clear a bimodality between star-forming and quiescent galaxies as is seen in observations. The former issue is due to an excess of dust in low-mass galaxies and relatively gray attenuation curves in high-mass galaxies, while the latter is due to the overpopulation of the green valley in SIMBA. When investigating the time evolution of galaxies on the UVJ diagram, we find that the quenching pathway on the UVJ diagram is independent of the quenching timescale, and instead dependent primarily on the average specific star formation rate in the 1 Gyr prior to the onset of quenching. Our results support the interpretation of different quenching pathways as corresponding to the divergent evolution of post-starburst and green valley galaxies.

arXiv commentAccepted to ApJ

References in corpus (128)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2
• The Dust Content and Opacity of Actively Star-Forming Galaxies
• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
• MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST). I: Solar-Scaled Models
• Evolutionary tracks and isochrones for low- and intermediate-mass stars: from 0.15 to 7 M_sun, and from Z=0.0004 to 0.03
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) 0: Methods for the construction of stellar isochrones
• The Initial Mass Function of Stars: Evidence for Uniformity in Variable Systems
• A Simple Model for the Absorption of Starlight by Dust in Galaxies
• Color Separation of Galaxy Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• MILES: A Medium resolution INT Library of Empirical Spectra
• Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy color bimodality
• A Highly Consistent Framework for the Evolution of the Star-Forming "Main Sequence" from z~0-6
• Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars II. Optical to far-infrared isochrones with improved TP-AGB models
• Galaxies on FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments): Stellar Feedback Explains Cosmologically Inefficient Star Formation
• The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• A Multi-Code Analysis Toolkit for Astrophysical Simulation Data
• Nearly 5000 Distant Early-Type Galaxies in COMBO-17: a Red Sequence and its Evolution since z~1
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling III: model calibration, comparison, and evaluation
• GIZMO: A New Class of Accurate, Mesh-Free Hydrodynamic Simulation Methods
• Simba: Cosmological Simulations with Black Hole Growth and Feedback
• Galaxy Luminosity Functions to z~1: DEEP2 vs. COMBO-17 and Implications for Red Galaxy Formation
• Mass assembly in quiescent and star-forming galaxies since z=4 from UltraVISTA
• 3D-HST WFC3-selected Photometric Catalogs in the Five CANDELS/3D-HST Fields: Photometry, Photometric Redshifts and Stellar Masses
• The Evolution of the Stellar Mass Functions of Star-Forming and Quiescent Galaxies to z = 4 from the COSMOS/UltraVISTA Survey
• Detection of quiescent galaxies in a bicolor sequence from z=0-2
• Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: construction, observational verification and new results
• Constraining the Low-Mass Slope of the Star Formation Sequence at 0.5<z<2.5
• AGN Dusty Tori: II. Observational Implications of Clumpiness
• Inferring the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies with BAGPIPES: Evidence for multiple quenching mechanisms
• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey ZYJHK Photometric System: Passbands and Synthetic Colours
• The 3D-HST Survey: Hubble Space Telescope WFC3/G141 grism spectra, redshifts, and emission line measurements for $\sim 100,000$ galaxies
• 3D-HST: A wide-field grism spectroscopic survey with the Hubble Space Telescope
• A new photometric technique for the joint selection of star-forming and passive galaxies at 1.4<z<2.5
• The bimodal galaxy color distribution: dependence on luminosity and environment
• The Evolution of the Elemental Abundances in the Gas and Dust Phases of the Galaxy
• AGN Dusty Tori: I. Handling of Clumpy Media
• Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs
• Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector: Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129 Galaxies in the Local Universe
• The NEWFIRM Medium-band Survey: Photometric Catalogs, Redshifts and the Bimodal Color Distribution of Galaxies out to z~3
• Galaxy Stellar Mass Functions from ZFOURGE/CANDELS: An Excess of Low-Mass Galaxies Since z=2 and the Rapid Buildup of Quiescent Galaxies
• The MOSFIRE Deep Evolution Field (MOSDEF) Survey: Rest-Frame Optical Spectroscopy for ~1500 H-Selected Galaxies at 1.37 < z < 3.8
• The Cosmic Baryon Cycle and Galaxy Mass Assembly in the FIRE Simulations
• Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Stellar Population Synthesis Models
• The Dust Attenuation Law in Distant Galaxies: Evidence for Variation with Spectral Type
• IRAC Mid-Infrared Imaging of the Hubble Deep Field South: Star Formation Histories and Stellar Masses of Red Galaxies at z>2
• What do we learn from IRAC observations of galaxies at 2 < z < 3.5?
• Grackle: a Chemistry and Cooling Library for Astrophysics
• MUFASA: Galaxy Formation Simulations With Meshless Hydrodynamics
• The Cosmic Baryon and Metal Cycles
• The SWIRE-VVDS-CFHTLS surveys: stellar mass assembly over the last 10 Gyears. Evidence for a major build up of the red sequence between z=2 and z=1
• A Comparison of Methods for Determining the Molecular Content of Model Galaxies
• The star-formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics
• AGN-driven quenching of star formation: morphological and dynamical implications for early-type galaxies
• An Analytic Model of Angular Momentum Transport by Gravitational Torques: From Galaxies to Massive Black Holes
• The evolving relations between size, mass, surface density, and star formation in 3x10^4 galaxies since z=2
• The Dust Attenuation Law in Galaxies
• A massive, quiescent galaxy at redshift of z=3.717
• Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations
• A standard stellar library for evolutionary synthesis. III. Metallicity calibration
• Near infrared spectroscopy and star-formation histories of 3<z<4 quiescent galaxies
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling II: The challenge of comparing galaxy evolution models to observations
• The Dead Sequence: A Clear Bimodality in Galaxy Colors from z=0 to z=2.5
• HYPERION: An open-source parallelized three-dimensional dust continuum radiative transfer code
• A Large Population of Massive Compact Post-Starburst Galaxies at z>1: Implications for the Size Evolution and Quenching Mechanism of Quiescent Galaxies
• The HDUV Survey: A Revised Assessment of the Relationship between UV Slope and Dust Attenuation for High-Redshift Galaxies
• MOSFIRE Spectroscopy of Quiescent Galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5. II - Star Formation Histories and Galaxy Quenching
• Quiescent galaxies 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang and their progenitors
• The VANDELS survey: the star-formation histories of massive quiescent galaxies at 1.0 < z < 1.3
• Direct measurements of dust attenuation in z~1.5 star-forming galaxies from 3D-HST: Implications for dust geometry and star formation rates
• CANDELS+3D-HST: compact SFGs at z~2-3, the progenitors of the first quiescent galaxies
• The Dust-to-Gas and Dust-to-Metals Ratio in Galaxies from z=0-6
• The evolution of star formation histories of quiescent galaxies
• How Well Can We Measure the Stellar Mass of a Galaxy: The Impact of the Assumed Star Formation History Model in SED Fitting
• Dust Formation in Milky Way-like Galaxies
• The evolution of post-starburst galaxies from z=2 to z= 0.5
• Quiescent Galaxies in the 3D-HST Survey: Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Large Number of Galaxies with Relatively Old Stellar Populations at z~2
• Breaking the Curve with CANDELS: A Bayesian Approach to Reveal the Non-Universality of the Dust-Attenuation Law at High Redshift
• Dust attenuation in 2<z<3 star-forming galaxies from deep ALMA observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• The Intrinsic Properties of SDSS Galaxies
• Galaxy Cold Gas Contents in Modern Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations
• A Theory for the Variation of Dust Attenuation Laws in Galaxies
• Mergers, Starbursts, and Quenching in the Simba Simulation
• Black Hole-Galaxy Correlations without Self-Regulation
• The IRX-Beta Dust Attenuation Relation in Cosmological Galaxy Formation Simulations
• Fast and slow paths to quiescence: ages and sizes of 400 quiescent galaxies from the LEGA-C survey
• Interstellar Grains in Elliptical Galaxies: Grain Evolution
• An Extremely Massive Quiescent Galaxy at $z=3.493$: Evidence of Insufficiently Rapid Quenching Mechanisms in Theoretical Models
• Demographics of Star-forming Galaxies since $z\sim 2.5$. I. The $UVJ$ Diagram in CANDELS
• Spatially Resolved Star Formation and Inside-out Quenching in the TNG50 Simulation and 3D-HST Observations
• The UVJ Selection of Quiescent and Star Forming Galaxies: Separating Early and Late-Type Galaxies and Isolating Edge-on Spirals
• Colours, Star formation Rates, and Environments of Star forming and Quiescent Galaxies at the Cosmic Noon
• The Star Formation Rate-Density Relation at 0.6<z<0.9 and the Role of Star Forming Galaxies
• Massive post-starburst galaxies at z > 1 are compact proto-spheroids
• Torque-Limited Growth of Massive Black Holes in Galaxies Across Cosmic Time
• Timing the earliest quenching events with a robust sample of massive quiescent galaxies at 2 < z < 5
• Dust Attenuation in High Redshift Galaxies -- 'Diamonds in the Sky'
• Radiative Transfer Model of Dust Attenuation Curves in Clumpy, Galactic Environments
• Beyond UVJ: More Efficient Selection of Quiescent Galaxies With UV / Mid-IR Fluxes
• The Evolution of the Fractions of Quiescent and Star-forming Galaxies as a Function of Stellar Mass Since z=3: Increasing Importance of Massive, Dusty Star-forming Galaxies in the Early Universe
• The Age Spread of Quiescent Galaxies with the NEWFIRM Medium-band Survey: Identification of the Oldest Galaxies out to z~2
• Fade to grey: systematic variation of the galaxy attenuation curves with galaxy properties in EAGLE
• Reproducing sub-millimetre galaxy number counts with cosmological hydrodynamic simulations
• The Relation between Galaxy Structure and Spectral Type: Implications for the Buildup of the Quiescent Galaxy Population at 0.5<z<2.0
• Physical properties and evolution of (Sub-)millimeter selected galaxies in the galaxy formation simulation Shark
• Dissecting the size-mass and ${\Sigma }_1$-mass relations at 1.0 < z < 2.5: galaxy mass profiles and color gradients as a function of spectral shape
• Powderday: Dust Radiative Transfer for Galaxy Simulations
• Self-consistent predictions for LIER-like emission lines from post-AGB stars
• Stellar and nebular diagnostics in the UV for star-forming galaxies
• Circumstellar Dust Around AGB Stars and Implications for Infrared Emission from Galaxies
• Color gradients along the quiescent galaxy sequence: clues to quenching and structural growth
• MUFASA: The assembly of the red sequence
• Cosmological baryon transfer in the SIMBA simulations
• Tracing the evolution of dust-obscured activity using sub-millimetre galaxy populations from STUDIES and AS2UDS
• High Molecular-Gas to Dust Mass Ratios Predicted in Most Quiescent Galaxies
• The First Robust Constraints on the Relationship Between Dust-to-Gas Ratio and Metallicity in Luminous Star-forming Galaxies at High Redshift
• The BPT Diagram in Cosmological Galaxy Formation Simulations: Understanding the Physics Driving Offsets at High-Redshift
• UV to IR Luminosities and Dust Attenuation Determined from ~4000 K-Selected Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the ZFOURGE Survey
• The Origin of the Dust Extinction Curve in Milky Way-like Galaxies
• Recent Star-formation in a Massive Slowly-Quenched Lensed Quiescent Galaxy at z=1.88
• Direct Detections of Young Stars in Nearby Elliptical Galaxies
• Reproducing the UVJ Color Distribution of Star-forming Galaxies at 0.5 < z < 2.5 with a Geometric Model of Dust Attenuation
• Simulations Find Our Accounting of Dust-Obscured Star Formation May Be Incomplete

Cited by in corpus (21)

• A surprising abundance of massive quiescent galaxies at 3 < z < 5 in the first data from JWST CEERS
• COSMOS2020: Exploring the dawn of quenching for massive galaxies at 3 < z < 5 with a new colour selection method
• Beyond UVJ: Color Selection of Galaxies in the JWST Era
• Early JWST imaging reveals strong optical and NIR color gradients in galaxies at $z\sim 2$ driven mostly by dust
• Stochastic Modelling of Star Formation Histories III. Constraints from Physically-Motivated Gaussian Processes
• More is better: Strong constraints on the stellar properties of LEGA-C z ~ 1 galaxies with Prospector
• Ageing and Quenching through the ageing diagram: predictions from simulations and observational constraints
• Cosmic Sands: The Origin of Dusty, Star-forming Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization
• The Nature and Evolution of Early Massive Quenched Galaxies in the Simba-C Simulation
• Tracing the evolutionary pathways of dust and cold gas in high-z quiescent galaxies with SIMBA
• The connection between stellar mass, age and quenching timescale in massive quiescent galaxies at $z\simeq 1$
• The mass-dependent UVJ diagram at cosmic noon: A challenge for galaxy evolution models and dust radiative transfer
• The relationship between cluster environment and molecular gas content of star-forming galaxies in the EAGLE simulation
• Empirical Dust Attenuation Model Leads to More Realistic UVJ Diagram for TNG100 Galaxies
• The multi-wavelength Tully-Fisher relation in the TNG50 cosmological simulation
• Atomic Hydrogen Shows its True Colours: Correlations between HI and Galaxy Colour in Simulations
• Predicting the resolved CO emission of $z=1-3$ star-forming galaxies
• Galaxy and black hole coevolution in dark matter haloes not captured by cosmological simulations
• Cosmological simulations predict that AGN preferentially live in gas-rich, star-forming galaxies despite effective feedback
• Ageing and Quenching: Influence of Galaxy Environment and Nuclear Activity in Transition Stage
• SQuIGGLE: Studying Quenching in Intermediate-z Galaxies -- Gas, AnguLar Momentum, and Evolution