The Formation of Compact Elliptical Galaxies in the Vicinity of a Massive Galaxy: The Role of Ram-pressure Confinement

Du, Min; Debattista, Victor P.; Ho, Luis C.; Côté, Patrick; Spengler, Chelsea; Erwin, Peter; Wadsley, James; Norris, Mark A.; Earp, Samuel W. F.; Quinn, Thomas; Fiteni, Karl; Caruana, Joseph

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab0e0c

Cited by 35 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Each time the galaxy passes pericenter, it resumes lowlevel AGN activity (peak Eddington ratios of ≈ 10 −2 to 10 −3 ). Similar behavior has been noted in a simulation of the formation of a compact elliptical galaxy (without a SMBH), resulting in central starbursts (Du et al 2019). While this is the most dramatic example of repetitive SMBH fueling at pericenter passage, we notice similar behavior in three other cluster members, all of relatively high stellar mass.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

A Link Between Ram Pressure Stripping and Active Galactic Nuclei

Ricarte,

Tremmel,

Natarajan

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The dense environment of a galaxy cluster can radically transform the content of in-falling galaxies. Recent observations have found a significant population of active galactic nuclei (AGN) within "jellyfish galaxies," galaxies with trailing tails of gas and stars that indicate significant ram pressure stripping. The relationship between AGN and ram pressure stripping is not well understood. In this letter, we investigate the connection between AGN activity and ram pressure in a fully cosmological setting for the first time using the RomulusC simulation, one of the highest resolution simulations of a galaxy cluster to date. We find unambiguous morphological evidence for ram pressure stripping. For lower mass galaxies (with stellar masses M * 10 9.5 M ) both star formation and black hole accretion are suppressed by ram pressure before they reach pericenter, whereas for more massive galaxies accretion onto the black hole is enhanced during pericentric passage. Our analysis also indicates that as long as the galaxy retains gas, AGN with higher Eddington ratios are more likely to be the found in galaxies experiencing higher ram pressure. We conclude that prior to quenching star formation, ram pressure triggers enhanced accretion onto the black hole, which then produces heating and outflows due to AGN feedback. AGN feedback may in turn serve to aid in the quenching of star formation in tandem with ram pressure.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

A Link Between Ram Pressure Stripping and Active Galactic Nuclei

Ricarte,

Tremmel,

Natarajan

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…There it can increase the number and density of in situ stars, potentially even decreasing the half-mass radius of the galaxy (see e.g. Du et al 2019).…”

Section: Ex Situ Fractions Across the Mass-size Planementioning

confidence: 99%

An EAGLE’s view of ex situ galaxy growth

Davison

Norris

Pfeffer

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Modern observational and analytic techniques now enable the direct measurement of star formation histories and the inference of galaxy assembly histories. However, current theoretical predictions of assembly are not ideally suited for direct comparison with such observational data. We therefore extend the work of prior examinations of the contribution of ex-situ stars to the stellar mass budget of simulated galaxies. Our predictions are specifically tailored for direct testing with a new generation of observational techniques by calculating ex-situ fractions as functions of galaxy mass and morphological type, for a range of surface brightnesses. These enable comparison with results from large FoV IFU spectrographs, and increasingly accurate spectral fitting, providing a look-up method for the estimated accreted fraction. We furthermore provide predictions of ex-situ mass fractions as functions of galaxy mass, galactocentric radius and environment. Using z = 0 snapshots from the 100cMpc3 and 25cMpc3 EAGLE simulations we corroborate the findings of prior studies, finding that ex-situ fraction increases with stellar mass for central and satellite galaxies in a stellar mass range of 2× 107 - 1.9× 1012 M⊙. For those galaxies of mass M*>5× 108M⊙, we find that the total ex-situ mass fraction is greater for more extended galaxies at fixed mass. When categorising satellite galaxies by their parent group/cluster halo mass we find that the ex-situ fraction decreases with increasing parent halo mass at fixed galaxy mass. This apparently counter-intuitive result may be due to high passing velocities within large cluster halos inhibiting efficient accretion onto individual galaxies.

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“…Paudel & Ree 2014;Ferré-Mateu et al 2018a;Kim et al 2020). In terms of simulations, Bekki et al (2001), Pfeffer & Baumgardt (2013); Pfeffer et al (2016) and Goodman & Bekki (2018) have reproduced the stripping path for UCDs, whereas Martinović & Micic (2017), Du et al (2019) and Urrutia Zapata et al (2019) have shown that both being formed in-situ as low-mass galaxies but also being the result of stripping larger galaxies can reproduce the observed properties of cEs. Although the numbers of both families are still very limited, understanding their nature is vital to understand the complete baryonic budget of the Universe, and thus obtaining the proportion of in-situ formed (intrinsic) vs external processes (stripping) objects in each family is a critical effort.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

A search for active galactic nuclei in low-mass compact galaxies

Ferre-Mateu,

Mezcua,

Barrows

2021

Preprint

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Low-mass compact galaxies (ultracompact dwarfs -UCDs-and compact ellipticals -cEs-) populate the stellar size-mass plane between globular clusters and early-type galaxies. Known to be formed either in-situ with an intrinsically low mass or resulting from the stripping of a more massive galaxy, the presence of a supermassive or an intermediate-mass black hole (BH) could help discriminate between these possible scenarios. With this aim, we have performed a multiwavelength search of active BH activity, i.e. active galactic nuclei (AGN), in a sample of 937 low-mass compact galaxies (580 UCDs and 357 cEs). This constitutes the largest study of AGN activity in these types of galaxies. Based on their X-ray luminosity, radio luminosity and morphology, and/or optical emission line diagnostic diagrams, we find a total of 11 cEs that host an AGN. We also study for the first time the location of both low-mass compact galaxies (UCDs and cEs) and dwarf galaxies hosting AGN on the BH-galaxy scaling relations, finding that low-mass compact galaxies tend to be overmassive in the BH mass-stellar mass plane but not as much in the BH mass-stellar velocity dispersion correlation. This, together with available BH mass measurements for some of the low-mass compact galaxies, supports a stripping origin for the majority of these objects that would contribute to the scatter seen at the low-mass end of the BH-galaxy scaling relations. However, the differences are too large to be explained solely by this scatter, and thus our results suggest that a flattening at such low-masses is also plausible, happening at a velocity dispersion of ∼20-40 km s−1.

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The Formation of Compact Elliptical Galaxies in the Vicinity of a Massive Galaxy: The Role of Ram-pressure Confinement

Cited by 35 publications

References 70 publications

A Link Between Ram Pressure Stripping and Active Galactic Nuclei

A Link Between Ram Pressure Stripping and Active Galactic Nuclei

An EAGLE’s view of ex situ galaxy growth

A search for active galactic nuclei in low-mass compact galaxies

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