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Register a new userMass and Environment as Drivers of Galaxy Evolution. IV. On the Quenching of Massive Central Disk Galaxies in The Local Universe
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The phenomenological study of evolving galaxy populations has shown that star forming galaxies can be quenched by two distinct processes: mass quenching and environment quenching (Peng et al. 2010). To explore the mass quenching process in local galaxies, we study the massive central disk galaxies with stellar mass above the Schechter characteristic mass. In Zhang et al. (2019), we showed that during the quenching of the massive central disk galaxies as their star formation rate (SFR) decreases, their molecular gas mass and star formation efficiency drop rapidly, but their HI gas mass remains surprisingly constant. To identify the underlying physical mechanisms, in this work we analyze the change during quenching of various structure parameters, bar frequency, and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity. We find three closely related facts. On average, as SFR decreases in these galaxies: (1) they become progressively more compact, indicated by their significantly increasing concentration index, bulge-to-total mass ratio, and central velocity dispersion, which are mainly driven by the growth and compaction of their bulge component; (2) the frequency of barred galaxies increases dramatically, and at a given concentration index the barred galaxies have a significantly higher quiescent fraction than unbarred galaxies, implying that the galactic bar may play an important role in mass quenching; and (3) the AGN frequency increases dramatically from 10% on the main sequence to almost 100% for the most quiescent galaxies, which is mainly driven by the sharp increase of LINERs. These observational results lead to a self-consistent picture of how mass quenching operates.
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The kinematic morphology-density relation of galaxies is normally attributed to a changing distribution of galaxy stellar masses with the local environment. However, earlier studies were largely focused on slow rotators; the dynamical properties of the overall population in relation to environment have received less attention. We use the SAMI Galaxy Survey to investigate the dynamical properties of $sim$1800 early and late-type galaxies with $log(M_*/M_{odot})>9.5$ as a function of mean environmental overdensity ($Sigma_{5}$) and their rank within a group or cluster. By classifying galaxies into fast and slow rotators, at fixed stellar mass above $log(M_*/M_{odot})>10.5$, we detect a higher fraction ($sim3.4sigma$) of slow rotators for group and cluster centrals and satellites as compared to isolated-central galaxies. Focusing on the fast-rotator population, we also detect a significant correlation between galaxy kinematics and their stellar mass as well as the environment they are in. Specifically, by using inclination-corrected or intrinsic $lambda_{R_e}$ values, we find that, at fixed mass, satellite galaxies on average have the lowest $lambda_{,R_e,intr}$, isolated-central galaxies have the highest $lambda_{,R_e,intr}$, and group and cluster centrals lie in between. Similarly, galaxies in high-density environments have lower mean $lambda_{,R_e,intr}$ values as compared to galaxies at low environmental density. However, at fixed $Sigma_{5}$, the mean $lambda_{,R_e,intr}$ differences for low and high-mass galaxies are of similar magnitude as when varying $Sigma_{5}$ {($Delta lambda_{,R_e,intr} sim 0.05$. Our results demonstrate that after stellar mass, environment plays a significant role in the creation of slow rotators, while for fast rotators we also detect an independent, albeit smaller, impact of mass and environment on their kinematic properties.
We present a detailed analysis of the specific star formation rate -- stellar mass ($mathrm{sSFR}-M_*$) of $zle 0.13$ disk central galaxies using a morphologically selected mass-complete sample ($M_* ge 10^{9.5} M_{odot}$). Considering samples of grouped and ungrouped galaxies, we find the $mathrm{sSFR}-M_*$ relations of disk-dominated central galaxies to have no detectable dependence on host dark-matter halo (DMH) mass, even where weak-lensing measurements indicate a difference in halo mass of a factor $gtrsim5$. We further detect a gradual evolution of the $mathrm{sSFR}-M_*$ relation of non-grouped (field) central disk galaxies with redshift, even over a $Delta z approx 0.04$ ($approx5cdot10^{8}mathrm{yr}$) interval, while the scatter remains constant. This evolution is consistent with extrapolation of the main-sequence-of-star-forming-galaxies from previous literature that uses larger redshift baselines and coarser sampling. Taken together, our results present new constraints on the paradigm under which the SFR of galaxies is determined by a self-regulated balance between gas inflows and outflows, and consumption of gas by star-formation in disks, with the inflow being determined by the product of the cosmological accretion rate and a fuelling-efficiency -- $dot{M}_{mathrm{b,halo}}zeta$. In particular, maintaining the paradigm requires $dot{M}_{mathrm{b,halo}}zeta$ to be independent of the mass $M_{mathrm{halo}}$ of the host DMH. Furthermore, it requires the fuelling-efficiency $zeta$ to have a strong redshift dependence ($propto (1+z)^{2.7}$ for $M_*=10^{10.3} M_{odot}$ over $z=0 - 0.13$), even though no morphological transformation to spheroids can be invoked to explain this in our disk-dominated sample. The physical mechanisms capable of giving rise to such dependencies of $zeta$ on $M_{mathrm{halo}}$ and $z$ for disks are unclear.
We study the roles of stellar mass and environment in quenching the star formation activity of a large set of simulated galaxies by taking advantage of an analytic model coupled to the merger tree extracted from an N-body simulation. The analytic model has been set to match the evolution of the global stellar mass function since redshift $zsim 2.3$ and give reasonable predictions of the star formation history of galaxies at the same time. We find that stellar mass and environment play different roles: the star formation rate/specific star formation rate-$M_*$ relations are independent of the environment (defined as the halo mass) at any redshift probed, $0<z<1.5$, for both star forming and quiescent galaxies, while the star formation rate-$M_{halo}$ relation strongly depends on stellar mass in the same redshift range, for both star forming and quiescent galaxies. Moreover, the star formation rate and the specific star formation rate are strongly dependent on stellar mass even when the distance from the cluster core is used as a proxy for the environment, rather than the halo mass. We then conclude that stellar mass is the main driver of galaxy quenching at any redshift probed in this study, not just at $z>1$ as generally claimed, while the environment has a minimal role. All the physical processes linked to the environment must act on very short timescales, such that they do not influence the star formation of active galaxies, but increase the probability of a given galaxy to become quiescent.
We explore the inter-relationships between mass, star-formation rate and environment in the SDSS, zCOSMOS and other surveys. The differential effects of mass and environment are completely separable to z ~ 1, indicating that two distinct processes are operating, mass-quenching and environment-quenching. Environment-quenching, at fixed over-density, evidently does not change with epoch to z ~ 1, suggesting that it occurs as large-scale structure develops in the Universe. The observed constancy of the mass-function shape for star-forming galaxies, demands that the mass-quenching of galaxies around and above M*, must be proportional to their star-formation rates at all z < 2. We postulate that this simple mass-quenching law also holds over a much broader range of stellar mass and epoch. These two simple quenching processes, plus some additional quenching due to merging, then naturally produce (a) a quasi-static Schechter mass function for star-forming galaxies with a value of M* that is set by the proportionality between the star-formation and mass-quenching rates, (b) a double Schechter function for passive galaxies with two components: the dominant one is produced by mass-quenching and has exactly the same M* as the star-forming galaxies but an alpha shallower by +1, while the other is produced by environment effects and has the same M* and alpha as the star-forming galaxies, and is larger in high density environments. Subsequent merging of quenched galaxies modifies these predictions somewhat in the denser environments, slightly increasing M* and making alpha more negative. All of these detailed quantitative relationships between the Schechter parameters are indeed seen in the SDSS, lending strong support to our simple empirically-based model. The model naturally produces for passive galaxies the anti-hierarchical run of mean ages and alpha-element abundances with mass.
We take advantage of an analytic model of galaxy formation coupled to the merger tree of an N-body simulation to study the roles of environment and stellar mass in the quenching of galaxies. The model has been originally set in order to provide the observed evolution of the stellar mass function as well as reasonable predictions of the star formation rate-stellar mass relation, from high redshift to the present time. We analyse the stellar mass and environmental quenching efficiencies and their dependence on stellar mass, halo mass (taken as a proxy for the environment) and redshift. Our analysis shows that the two quenching efficiencies are redshift, stellar and halo mass dependent, and that the halo mass is also a good proxy for the environment. The environmental quenching increases with decreasing redshift and is inefficient below $log M_* sim 9.5$, reaches the maximum value at $log M_* sim 10.5$, and decreases again, becoming poorly efficient at very high stellar mass ($log M_* gtrsim 11.5$). Central and satellites galaxies are mass quenched differently: for the former, the quenching efficiency depends very weakly on redshift, but strongly on stellar mass; for the latter, it strongly depends on both stellar mass and redshift in the range $10lesssim log M_* lesssim 11$. According to the most recent observational results, we find that the two quenching efficiencies are not separable: intermediate mass galaxies are environmental quenched faster, as well as intermediate/massive galaxies in more massive haloes. At stellar masses lower than $log M_* lesssim 9.5$ both quenching mechanisms become inefficient, independently of the redshift.
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