No Arabic abstract
We study the evolution of satellite galaxies in clusters of the C-EAGLE simulations, a suite of 30 high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations based on the EAGLE code. We find that the majority of galaxies that are quenched at $z=0$ ($gtrsim$ 80$%$) reached this state in a dense environment (log$_{10}$M$_{200}$[M$_{odot}$]$geq$13.5). At low redshift, regardless of the final cluster mass, galaxies appear to reach their quenching state in low mass clusters. Moreover, galaxies quenched inside the cluster that they reside in at $z=0$ are the dominant population in low-mass clusters, while galaxies quenched in a different halo dominate in the most massive clusters. When looking at clusters at $z>0.5$, their in-situ quenched population dominates at all cluster masses. This suggests that galaxies are quenched inside the first cluster they fall into. After galaxies cross the clusters $r_{200}$ they rapidly become quenched ($lesssim$ 1Gyr). Just a small fraction of galaxies ($lesssim 15%$) is capable of retaining their gas for a longer period of time, but after 4Gyr, almost all galaxies are quenched. This phenomenon is related to ram pressure stripping and is produced when the density of the intracluster medium reaches a threshold of $rho_{rm ICM}$ $sim 3 times 10 ^{-5}$ n$_{rm H}$ (cm$^{-3}$). These results suggest that galaxies start a rapid-quenching phase shortly after their first infall inside $r_{200}$ and that, by the time they reach $r_{500}$, most of them are already quenched.
A standard prediction of galaxy formation theory is that the ionizing background suppresses galaxy formation in haloes with peak circular velocities smaller than Vpeak ~ 20 km/s, rendering the majority of haloes below this scale completely dark. We use a suite of cosmological zoom simulations of Milky Way-like haloes that include central Milky Way disk galaxy potentials to investigate the relationship between subhaloes and ultrafaint galaxies. We find that there are far too few subhaloes within 50 kpc of the Milky Way that had Vpeak > 20 km/s to account for the number of ultrafaint galaxies already known within that volume today. In order to match the observed count, we must populate subhaloes down to Vpeak ~ 6 km/s with ultrafaint dwarfs. The required haloes have peak virial temperatures as low as 1,500 K, well below the atomic hydrogen cooling limit of 10^4 K. Allowing for the possibility that the Large Magellanic Cloud contributes several of the satellites within 50 kpc could potentially raise this threshold to 10 km/s (4,000 K), still below the atomic cooling limit and far below the nominal reionization threshold.
The vast majority of dwarf satellites orbiting the Milky Way and M31 are quenched, while comparable galaxies in the field are gas-rich and star-forming. Assuming that this dichotomy is driven by environmental quenching, we use the ELVIS suite of N-body simulations to constrain the characteristic timescale upon which satellites must quench following infall into the virial volumes of their hosts. The high satellite quenched fraction observed in the Local Group demands an extremely short quenching timescale (~ 2 Gyr) for dwarf satellites in the mass range Mstar ~ 10^6-10^8 Msun. This quenching timescale is significantly shorter than that required to explain the quenched fraction of more massive satellites (~ 8 Gyr), both in the Local Group and in more massive host halos, suggesting a dramatic change in the dominant satellite quenching mechanism at Mstar < 10^8 Msun. Combining our work with the results of complementary analyses in the literature, we conclude that the suppression of star formation in massive satellites (Mstar ~ 10^8 - 10^11 Msun) is broadly consistent with being driven by starvation, such that the satellite quenching timescale corresponds to the cold gas depletion time. Below a critical stellar mass scale of ~ 10^8 Msun, however, the required quenching times are much shorter than the expected cold gas depletion times. Instead, quenching must act on a timescale comparable to the dynamical time of the host halo. We posit that ram-pressure stripping can naturally explain this behavior, with the critical mass (of Mstar ~ 10^8 Msun) corresponding to halos with gravitational restoring forces that are too weak to overcome the drag force encountered when moving through an extended, hot circumgalactic medium.
We use the Cosmic Assembly Deep Near-infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) data to study the relationship between quenching and the stellar mass surface density within the central radius of 1 kpc ($Sigma_1$) of low-mass galaxies (stellar mass $M_* lesssim 10^{9.5} M_odot$) at $0.5 leq z < 1.5$. Our sample is mass complete down to $sim 10^9 M_odot$ at $0.5 leq z < 1.0$. We compare the mean $Sigma_1$ of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and quenched galaxies (QGs) at the same redshift and $M_*$. We find that low-mass QGs have higher $Sigma_1$ than low-mass SFGs, similar to galaxies above $10^{10} M_odot$. The difference of $Sigma_1$ between QGs and SFGs increases slightly with $M_*$ at $M_* lesssim 10^{10} M_odot$ and decreases with $M_*$ at $M_* gtrsim 10^{10} M_odot$. The turnover mass is consistent with the mass where quenching mechanisms transition from internal to environmental quenching. At $0.5 leq z < 1.0$, we find that the $Sigma_1$ of galaxies increases by about 0.25 dex in the green valley (i.e., the transitioning region from star forming to fully quenched), regardless of their $M_*$. Using the observed specific star formation rate (sSFR) gradient in the literature as a constraint, we estimate that the quenching timescale (i.e., time spent in the transition) of low-mass galaxies is a few ($sim4$) Gyrs at $0.5 leq z < 1.0$. The mechanisms responsible for quenching need to gradually quench star formation in an outside-in way, i.e., preferentially ceasing star formation in outskirts of galaxies while maintaining their central star formation to increase $Sigma_1$. An interesting and intriguing result is the similarity of the growth of $Sigma_1$ in the green valley between low-mass and massive galaxies, which suggests that the role of internal processes in quenching low-mass galaxies is a question worthy of further investigation.
We study dwarf satellite galaxy quenching using observations from the Geha et al. (2012) NSA/SDSS catalog together with LCDM cosmological simulations to facilitate selection and interpretation. We show that fewer than 30% of dwarfs (M* ~ 10^8.5-10^9.5 Msun) identified as satellites within massive host halos (Mhost ~ 10^12.5-10^14 Msun) are quenched, in spite of the expectation from simulations that half of them should have been accreted more than 6 Gyr ago. We conclude that whatever the action triggering environmental quenching of dwarf satellites, the process must be highly inefficient. We investigate a series of simple, one-parameter quenching models in order to understand what is required to explain the low quenched fraction and conclude that either the quenching timescale is very long (> 9.5 Gyr, a slow starvation scenario) or that the environmental trigger is not well matched to accretion within the virial volume. We discuss these results in light of the fact that most of the low mass dwarf satellites in the Local Group are quenched, a seeming contradiction that could point to a characteristic mass scale for satellite quenching.
We present Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of the recently discovered Milky Way satellite Tucana III (Tuc III). We identify 26 member stars in Tuc III, from which we measure a mean radial velocity of v_hel = -102.3 +/- 0.4 (stat.) +/- 2.0 (sys.) km/s, a velocity dispersion of 0.1^+0.7_-0.1 km/s, and a mean metallicity of [Fe/H] = -2.42^+0.07_-0.08. The upper limit on the velocity dispersion is sigma < 1.5 km/s at 95.5% confidence, and the corresponding upper limit on the mass within the half-light radius of Tuc III is 9.0 x 10^4 Msun. We cannot rule out mass-to-light ratios as large as 240 Msun/Lsun for Tuc III, but much lower mass-to-light ratios that would leave the system baryon-dominated are also allowed. We measure an upper limit on the metallicity spread of the stars in Tuc III of 0.19 dex at 95.5% confidence. Tuc III has a smaller metallicity dispersion and likely a smaller velocity dispersion than any known dwarf galaxy, but a larger size and lower surface brightness than any known globular cluster. Its metallicity is also much lower than those of the clusters with similar luminosity. We therefore tentatively suggest that Tuc III is the tidally-stripped remnant of a dark matter-dominated dwarf galaxy, but additional precise velocity and metallicity measurements will be necessary for a definitive classification. If Tuc III is indeed a dwarf galaxy, it is one of the closest external galaxies to the Sun. Because of its proximity, the most luminous stars in Tuc III are quite bright, including one star at V=15.7 that is the brightest known member star of an ultra-faint satellite.