The different physical mechanisms that drive the star formation histories of giant and dwarf galaxies

Haines, C. P.; Gargiulo, A.; Barbera, F. La; Mercurio, A.; Merluzzi, P.; Busarello, G.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12189.x

Cited by 134 publications

(186 citation statements)

References 206 publications

(349 reference statements)

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“…All this suggests that being a satellite in the vicinity of a massive central is a necessary condition to create a quiescent dwarf galaxy, in agreement with recent results (Haines et al 2007(Haines et al , 2008Weisz et al 2011;Geha et al 2012). Internal mechanisms -such as gas consumption via star formation or feedback effects -appear to be insufficient to completely cease the star formation activity in dwarf galaxies.…”

Section: Environmentsupporting

confidence: 77%

A Virtual Observatory Census to Address Dwarfs Origins (AVOCADO)

Sánchéz-Janssen¹,

Amorín²,

García-Vargas³

et al. 2013

A&A

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Context. Even though they are by far the most abundant of all galaxy types, the detailed properties of dwarf galaxies are still only poorly characterised -especially because of the observational challenge that their intrinsic faintness and weak clustering properties represent. Aims. AVOCADO aims at establishing firm conclusions on the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxies by constructing and analysing a homogeneous, multiwavelength dataset for a statistically significant sample of approximately 6500 nearby dwarfs (M i − 5 log h 100 > −18 mag). The sample is selected to lie within the 20 < D < 60 h −1 100 Mpc volume covered by the SDSS-DR7 footprint, and is thus volume-limited for M i − 5 log h 100 < −16 mag dwarfs -but includes ≈1500 fainter systems. We will investigate the roles of mass and environment in determining the current properties of the different dwarf morphological types -including their structure, their star formation activity, their chemical enrichment history, and a breakdown of their stellar, dust, and gas content. Methods. We present the sample selection criteria and describe the suite of analysis tools, some of them developed in the framework of the Virtual Observatory. We use optical spectra and UV-to-NIR imaging of the dwarf sample to derive star formation rates, stellar masses, ages, and metallicities -which are supplemented with structural parameters that are used to classify them morphologically. This unique dataset, coupled with a detailed characterisation of each dwarf's environment, allows for a fully comprehensive investigation of their origins and enables us to track the (potential) evolutionary paths between the different dwarf types. Results. We characterise the local environment of all dwarfs in our sample, paying special attention to trends with current star formation activity. We find that virtually all quiescent dwarfs are located in the vicinity (projected distances 1.5 h −1 100 Mpc) of L * companions, consistent with recent results. While star-forming dwarfs are preferentially found at separations of the order of 1 h −1 100 Mpc, there appears to be a tail towards low separations ( 100 h −1 100 kpc) in the distribution of projected distances. We speculate that, modulo projection effects, this probably represents a genuine population of late-type dwarfs caught upon first infall about their host and before environmental quenching has fully operated. In this context, these results suggest that internal mechanisms -such as gas exhaustion via star formation or feedback effects -are not sufficient to completely cease the star formation activity in dwarf galaxies, and that becoming the satellite of a massive central galaxy appears to be a necessary condition to create a quiescent dwarf.

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Section: Environmentsupporting

confidence: 77%

A Virtual Observatory Census to Address Dwarfs Origins (AVOCADO)

Sánchéz-Janssen¹,

Amorín²,

García-Vargas³

et al. 2013

A&A

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“…A higher fraction of passive sources are found in group and pair environments than are isolated -the passive peak is significantly larger for group and pair galaxies than for the isolated galaxies. This highlights the well-known trend of galaxy SF in group environments; for example, see Haines et al (2007), Haines, Gargiulo & Merluzzi (2008), Peng et al (2010), Mahajan, Haines & Raychaudhury (2010) and Mahajan et al (2015).…”

Section: E F I N I N G S Ta R -F O R M I N G / Pa S S I V E S Y S Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): growing up in a bad neighbourhood – how do low-mass galaxies become passive?

Davies

Robotham

Driver

et al. 2015

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms MNRAS 455, 4013-4029 (2016) ABSTRACTBoth theoretical predictions and observations of the very nearby Universe suggest that lowmass galaxies(log 10 [M * /M ] < 9.5) are likely to remain star-forming unless they are affected by their local environment. To test this premise, we compare and contrast the local environment of both passive and star-forming galaxies as a function of stellar mass, using the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey. We find that passive fractions are higher in both interacting pair and group galaxies than the field at all stellar masses, and that this effect is most apparent in the lowest mass galaxies. We also find that essentially all passive log 10 [M * /M ] < 8.5 galaxies are found in pair/group environments, suggesting that local interactions with a more massive neighbour cause them to cease forming new stars. We find that the effects of immediate environment (local galaxy-galaxy interactions) in forming passive systems increase with decreasing stellar mass, and highlight that this is potentially due to increasing interaction time-scales giving sufficient time for the galaxy to become passive via starvation. We then present a simplistic model to test this premise, and show that given our speculative assumptions, it is consistent with our observed results.

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“…Similarly, the morphology-density relation is very strong for low-mass galaxies (e.g., Binggeli et al 1990). It has also been found that the bulk of dwarf galaxies in galaxy groups and clusters are passively evolving, while, as the local density decreases, the fraction of passively evolving dwarfs drops rapidly, reaching zero in the rarefied field (e.g., Haines et al 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature vs. nurture in the low-density environment: structure and evolution of early-type dwarf galaxies in poor groups

Annibali

Grützbauch

Rampazzo

et al. 2011

A&A

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We present the stellar population properties of 13 dwarf galaxies residing in poor groups (low-density environment, LDE) observed with VIMOS at VLT. Ages, metallicities, and [α/Fe] ratios were derived within an r < r e /2 aperture from the Lick indices Hβ, Mgb, Fe5270, and Fe5335 through comparison with our simple stellar population (SSP) models that account for variable [α/Fe] ratios. For a fiducial subsample of 10 early-type dwarfs, we derived median values and scatters around the medians of 5.7 ± 4.4 Gyr, −0.26 ± 0.28, and −0.04 ± 0.33 for age, log Z/Z , and [α/Fe], respectively. For a selection of bright early-type galaxies (ETGs) from an earlier sample residing in a comparable environment, we derive median values of 9.8 ± 4.1 Gyr, 0.06 ± 0.16, and 0.18 ± 0.13 for the same stellar population parameters. It follows that dwarfs are on average younger, less metal rich, and less enhanced in the α-elements than giants, in agreement with the extrapolation to the low-mass regime of the scaling relations derived for giant ETGs. From the total (dwarf+giant) sample, we find that age ∝σ 0.39±0.22 , Z ∝ σ 0.80±0.16 , and α/Fe ∝ σ 0.42±0.22 . We also find correlations with morphology, in the sense that the metallicity and the [α/Fe] ratio increase with the Sersic index n or with the bulge-to-total light fraction B/T . The presence of a strong morphology-[α/Fe] relation appears to contradict the possible evolution along the Hubble sequence from low B/T (low n) to high B/T (high n) galaxies. We also investigate the role played by environment by comparing the properties of our LDE dwarfs with those of Coma red passive dwarfs from the literature. We find possible evidence that LDE dwarfs experienced more prolonged star formations than Coma dwarfs, however larger data samples are needed to draw firmer conclusions.

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The different physical mechanisms that drive the star formation histories of giant and dwarf galaxies

Cited by 134 publications

References 206 publications

A Virtual Observatory Census to Address Dwarfs Origins (AVOCADO)

A Virtual Observatory Census to Address Dwarfs Origins (AVOCADO)

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): growing up in a bad neighbourhood – how do low-mass galaxies become passive?

Nature vs. nurture in the low-density environment: structure and evolution of early-type dwarf galaxies in poor groups

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