Dissecting the mass quenching in TNG50: Galaxy size determines the quenching mode
arXiv:2510.24886 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae17c1
Abstract
The diminishing of star formation is accompanied by size differentiating, as quiescent galaxies are more compact than star-forming galaxies at fixed stellar mass. In order to understand how galaxy quenching is related to galaxy sizes, we performed a demographic study of 46 massive quiescent central galaxies with stellar mass from to in the TNG50 simulation. We found that, in addition to the triggering active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, galaxy size is also a major determinant of the quenching process, as small and compact galaxies are immediately quenched by the kinetic AGN feedback, while galaxies with large sizes are still active until strangulated by the cutoff of new gas replenishment. Further spatially resolved inspection reveals that this short and intense kinetic AGN feedback can only suppress the star formation within 1-2 kpc, resulting in this size-dependent effect of quenching. We also identify a long-term effect of a few Gyr timescale that the gas inflow rate is progressively suppressed after triggering kinetic feedback, which appears to effectively quench large galaxies entirely. We conclude that kinetic AGN feedback has two key roles in quenching: a short-term, intense effect that quenches the central 2 kpc region, and a long-term effect that suppresses the gas inflow rate and further quenches the entire galaxy.
15 pages, 7 figures, ApJ accepted
References in corpus (22)
- The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
- Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
- Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z=1.1 : The Dominance of Gradually Declining Star Formation, and the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies
- The hierarchical formation of the brightest cluster galaxies
- A Highly Consistent Framework for the Evolution of the Star-Forming "Main Sequence" from z~0-6
- Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback
- Predicting Quiescence: The Dependence of Specific Star Formation Rate on Galaxy Size and Central Density at 0.5<z<2.5
- Two Conditions for Galaxy Quenching: Compact Centres and Massive Haloes
- Spatially Resolved Star Formation and Inside-out Quenching in the TNG50 Simulation and 3D-HST Observations
- AGN Feedback and Star Formation of Quasar Host Galaxies: Insights from the Molecular Gas
- The quenching of galaxies, bulges, and disks since cosmic noon: A machine learning approach for identifying causality in astronomical data
- On the Elevation and Suppression of Star Formation within Galaxies
- The fundamental signature of star formation quenching from AGN feedback: A critical dependence of quiescence on supermassive black hole mass not accretion rate
- Quenching Timescales in the IllustrisTNG Simulation
- Effects of Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback on Cold Gas Depletion and Quenching of Central Galaxies
- Black holes regulate cool gas accretion in massive galaxies
- Dissect two-halo galactic conformity effect for central galaxies: The dependence of star formation activities on the large-scale environment
- Quenching of Massive Disk Galaxies in the IllustrisTNG Simulation
- Revisiting the fundamental metallicity relation with observation and simulation
- Cold Gas in Massive Galaxies as A Critical Test of Black Hole Feedback Models
- The kinematic bimodality: Efficient feedback and cold gas deficiency in slow-rotating galaxies
- Critical Stellar Central Densities Drive Galaxy Quenching in the Nearby Universe