No Arabic abstract
We study radial profiles in H$alpha$ equivalent width and specific star formation rate (sSFR) derived from spatially-resolved SDSS-IV MaNGA spectroscopy to gain insight on the physical mechanisms that suppress star formation and determine a galaxys location in the SFR-$rm M_star$ diagram. Even within the star-forming `main sequence, the measured sSFR decreases with stellar mass, both in an integrated and spatially-resolved sense. Flat sSFR radial profiles are observed for $rm log(M_star/ M_odot) < 10.5$, while star-forming galaxies of higher mass show a significant decrease in sSFR in the central regions, a likely consequence of both larger bulges and an inside-out growth history. Our primary focus is the green valley, constituted by galaxies lying below the star formation main sequence, but not fully passive. In the green valley we find sSFR profiles that are suppressed with respect to star-forming galaxies of the same mass at all galactocentric distances out to 2 effective radii. The responsible quenching mechanism therefore appears to affect the entire galaxy, not simply an expanding central region. The majority of green valley galaxies of $rm log(M_star/ M_odot) > 10.0$ are classified spectroscopically as central low-ionisation emission-line regions (cLIERs). Despite displaying a higher central stellar mass concentration, the sSFR suppression observed in cLIER galaxies is not simply due to the larger mass of the bulge. Drawing a comparison sample of star forming galaxies with the same $rm M_star$ and $rm Sigma_{1~kpc}$ (the mass surface density within 1 kpc), we show that a high $rm Sigma_{1~kpc}$ is not a sufficient condition for determining central quiescence.
Using kinematic maps from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey, we reveal that the majority of low-mass quenched galaxies exhibit coherent rotation in their stellar kinematics. Our sample includes all 39 quenched low-mass galaxies observed in the first year of MaNGA. The galaxies are selected with $M_{r} > -19.1$, stellar masses $10^{9}$ M$_{odot} < M_{star} < 5times10^{9}$ M$_{odot}$, EW$_{Halpha} <2$ AA, and all have red colours $(u-r)>1.9$. They lie on the size-magnitude and $sigma$-luminosity relations for previously studied dwarf galaxies. Just six ($15pm5.7$ per cent) are found to have rotation speeds $v_{e,rot} < 15$ km s$^{-1}$ at $sim1$ $R_{e}$, and may be dominated by pressure support at all radii. Two galaxies in our sample have kinematically distinct cores in their stellar component, likely the result of accretion. Six contain ionised gas despite not hosting ongoing star formation, and this gas is typically kinematically misaligned from their stellar component. This is the first large-scale Integral Field Unit (IFU) study of low mass galaxies selected without bias against low-density environments. Nevertheless, we find the majority of these galaxies are within $sim1.5$ Mpc of a bright neighbour ($M_{K} < -23$; or M$_{star} > 5times10^{10}$ M$_{odot}$), supporting the hypothesis that galaxy-galaxy or galaxy-group interactions quench star formation in low-mass galaxies. The local bright galaxy density for our sample is $rho_{proj} = 8.2pm2.0$ Mpc$^{-2}$, compared to $rho_{proj} = 2.1pm0.4$ Mpc$^{-2}$ for a star forming comparison sample, confirming that the quenched low mass galaxies are preferentially found in higher density environments.
We study the radial acceleration relation (RAR) for early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the SDSS MaNGA MPL5 dataset. The complete ETG sample show a slightly offset RAR from the relation reported by McGaugh et al. (2016) at the low-acceleration end; we find that the deviation is due to the fact that the slow rotators show a systematically higher acceleration relation than the McGaughs RAR, while the fast rotators show a consistent acceleration relation to McGaughs RAR. There is a 1sigma significant difference between the acceleration relations of the fast and slow rotators, suggesting that the acceleration relation correlates with the galactic spins, and that the slow rotators may have a different mass distribution compared with fast rotators and late-type galaxies. We suspect that the acceleration relation deviation of slow rotators may be attributed to more galaxy merger events, which would disrupt the original spins and correlated distributions of baryons and dark matter orbits in galaxies.
Gas stripping of spiral galaxies or mergers are thought to be the formation mechanisms of lenticular galaxies. In order to determine the conditions in which each scenario dominates, we derive stellar populations of both the bulge and disk regions of 279 lenticular galaxies in the MaNGA survey. We find a clear bimodality in stellar age and metallicity within the population of S0s and this is strongly correlated with stellar mass. Old and metal-rich bulges and disks belong to massive galaxies, and young and metal-poor bulges and disks are hosted by low-mass galaxies. From this we conclude that the bulges and disks are co-evolving. When the bulge and disk stellar ages are compared, we find that the bulge is almost always older than the disk for massive galaxies ($textrm{M}_{star} > 10^{10}~textrm{M}_{odot}$). The opposite is true for lower mass galaxies. We conclude that we see two separate populations of lenticular galaxies. The old, massive, and metal-rich population possess bulges that are predominantly older than their disks, which we speculate may have been caused by morphological or inside-out quenching. In contrast, the less massive and more metal-poor population have bulges with more recent star formation than their disks. We postulate they may be undergoing bulge rejuvenation (or disk fading), or compaction. Environment doesnt play a distinct role in the properties of either population. Our findings give weight to the notion that while the faded spiral scenario likely formed low-mass S0s, other processes, such as mergers, may be responsible for high-mass S0s.
We analyze the SDSS data to classify the galaxies based on their colour using a fuzzy set-theoretic method and quantify their environments using the local dimension. We find that the fraction of the green galaxies does not depend on the environment and $10%-20%$ of the galaxies at each environment are in the green valley depending on the stellar mass range chosen. Approximately $10%$ of the green galaxies at each environment host an AGN. Combining data from the Galaxy Zoo, we find that $sim 95%$ of the green galaxies are spirals and $sim 5%$ are ellipticals at each environment. Only $sim 8%$ of green galaxies exhibit signs of interactions and mergers, $sim 1%$ have dominant bulge, and $sim 6%$ host a bar. We show that the stellar mass distributions for the red and green galaxies are quite similar at each environment. Our analysis suggests that the majority of the green galaxies must curtail their star formation using physical mechanism(s) other than interactions, mergers, and those driven by bulge, bar and AGN activity. We speculate that these are the massive galaxies that have grown only via smooth accretion and suppressed the star formation primarily through mass driven quenching. Using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we do not find any statistically significant difference between the properties of green galaxies in different environments. We conclude that the environmental factors play a minor role and the internal processes play the dominant role in quenching star formation in the green valley galaxies.
Regions of disc galaxies with widespread star formation tend to be both gravitationally unstable and self-shielded against ionizing radiation, whereas extended outer discs with little or no star formation tend to be stable and unshielded on average. We explore what drives the transition between these two regimes, specifically whether discs first meet the conditions for self-shielding (parameterized by dust optical depth, $tau$) or gravitational instability (parameterized by a modified version of Toomres instability parameters, $Q_{rm thermal}$, which quantifies the stability of a gas disc that is thermally supported at $T=10^4$ K). We first introduce a new metric formed by the product of these quantities, $Q_{rm thermal}tau$, which indicates whether the conditions for disk instability or self-shielding are easier to meet in a given region of a galaxy, and we discuss how $Q_{rm thermal}tau$ can be constrained even in the absence of direct gas information. We then analyse a sample of 13 galaxies with resolved gas measurements and find that on average galaxies will reach the threshold for disk instabilities ($Q_{rm thermal}<1$) before reaching the threshold for self-shielding ($tau>1$). Using integral field spectroscopic observations of a sample of 236 galaxies from the MaNGA survey, we find that the value of $Q_{rm thermal}tau$ in star-forming discs is consistent with similar behavior. These results support a scenario where disc fragmentation and collapse occurs before self-shielding, suggesting that gravitational instabilities are the primary condition for widespread star formation in galaxy discs. Our results support similar conclusions based on recent galaxy simulations.