The Local Cluster Survey. I. Evidence of Outside-in Quenching in Dense Environments

Finn, Rose; Desai, Vandana; Rudnick, G.; Balogh, Michael L.; Haynes, Martha P.; Jablonka, P.; Koopmann, Rebecca A.; Moustakas, John; Peng, Chien Y.; Poggianti, Bianca M.; Rines, Kenneth J.; Zaritsky, Dennis

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aac32a

Cited by 28 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 103 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The existence of a strong correlation between HI deficiency and extent of the SFR density profiles (normalised to the extent of the optical disc) has now been confirmed by several independent works looking at different clusters and using Hα, ultraviolet emission or 24 µm emission as SFR indicators (Rose et al 2010;Cortese et al 2012a;Fossati et al 2013;Finn et al 2018). However, as shown in Figure 8, the strength of the correlation varies significantly depending on the star formation tracer used and, most importantly, on whether disc sizes are estimated using effective or isophotal radii.…”

Section: The Connection Between Cold Gas Stripping and Star Formation Quenchingmentioning

confidence: 72%

The Dawes Review 9: The role of cold gas stripping on the star formation quenching of satellite galaxies

Cortese

Catinella

Smith

2021

Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust.

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the key open questions in extragalactic astronomy is what stops star formation in galaxies. While it is clear that the cold gas reservoir, which fuels the formation of new stars, must be affected first, how this happens and what are the dominant physical mechanisms involved is still a matter of debate. At least for satellite galaxies, it is generally accepted that internal processes alone cannot be responsible for fully quenching their star formation, but that environment should play an important, if not dominant, role. In nearby clusters, we see examples of cold gas being removed from the star-forming discs of galaxies moving through the intracluster medium, but whether active stripping is widespread and/or necessary to halt star formation in satellites, or quenching is just a consequence of the inability of these galaxies to replenish their cold gas reservoirs, remains unclear. In this work, we review the current status of environmental studies of cold gas in star-forming satellites in the local Universe from an observational perspective, focusing on the evidence for a physical link between cold gas stripping and quenching of the star formation. We find that stripping of cold gas is ubiquitous in satellite galaxies in both group and cluster environments. While hydrodynamical mechanisms such as ram pressure are important, the emerging picture across the full range of dark matter halos and stellar masses is a complex one, where different physical mechanisms may act simultaneously and cannot always be easily separated. Most importantly, we show that stripping does not always lead to full quenching, as only a fraction of the cold gas reservoir might be affected at the first pericentre passage. We argue that this is a key point to reconcile apparent tensions between statistical and detailed analyses of satellite galaxies, as well as disagreements between various estimates of quenching timescales. We conclude by highlighting several outstanding questions where we expect to see substantial progress in the coming decades, thanks to the advent of the Square Kilometre Array and its precursors, as well as the next-generation optical and millimeter facilities.

show abstract

Section: The Connection Between Cold Gas Stripping and Star Formation Quenchingmentioning

confidence: 72%

The Dawes Review 9: The role of cold gas stripping on the star formation quenching of satellite galaxies

Cortese

Catinella

Smith

2021

Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust.

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Indeed, some of the most direct evidence for a marked influence on molecular gas by the ICM stems from spatiallyresolved CO studies of Virgo galaxies (e.g., Kenney et al 1990;Vollmer et al 2008;Lee et al 2017), revealing disturbed CO morphologies, extraplanar molecular gas, clumpy gas kinematics, and compressed CO. With even larger samples, Virgo galaxies have additionally been shown to have truncated Hα disks, further demonstrating that multiple gas components are stripped within cluster environments (e.g., Koopmann & Kenney 2004). Moreover, dust-enshrouded star-formation is also found to be more centrally concentrated than the stellar disk (Finn et al 2018). Many of these results are thus favoring an outside-in quenching mechanism for low-redshift galaxies within dense environments.…”

Section: The Extent Of Molecular Gas Compared To the Stellar Componentmentioning

confidence: 96%

Resolving CO (2−1) in z ∼ 1.6 Gas-rich Cluster Galaxies with ALMA: Rotating Molecular Gas Disks with Possible Signatures of Gas Stripping

Noble

Muzzin

McDonald

et al. 2019

ApJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present the first spatially-resolved observations of molecular gas in a sample of cluster galaxies beyond z > 0.1. Using ALMA, we detect CO (2-1) in eight z ∼ 1.6 cluster galaxies, all within a single 70 ′′ primary beam, in under three hours of integration time. The cluster, SpARCS-J0225, was discovered by the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, and is replete with gas-rich galaxies in close proximity. It thus affords an efficient multiplexing strategy to build up the first sample of resolved CO in distant galaxy clusters. Mapping out the kinematic structure and morphology of the molecular gas on ∼3.5 kiloparsec scales reveals rotating gas disks in the majority of the galaxies, as evidenced by smooth velocity gradients. Detailed velocity maps also uncover kinematic peculiarities, including a central gas void, a merger, and a few one-sided gas tails. We compare the extent of the molecular gas component to that of the optical stellar component, measured with rest-frame optical HST imaging. We find that the cluster galaxies, while broadly consistent with a ratio of unity for stellar-to-gas effective radii, have a moderately larger ratio compared to the coeval field; this is consistent with the more pronounced trend in the lowredshift Universe. Thus, at first glance, the z ∼ 1.6 cluster galaxies generally look like galaxies infalling from the field, with typical main-sequence star formation rates and massive molecular gas reservoirs situated in rotating disks. However, there are potentially important differences from their field counterparts, including elevated gas fractions, slightly smaller CO disks, and possible asymmetric gas tails. Taken in tandem, these signatures are tentative evidence for gas-stripping in the z ∼ 1.6 cluster. However, the current sample size of spatially-resolved molecular gas in galaxies at high redshift is small, and verification of these trends will require much larger samples of both cluster and field galaxies.

show abstract

“…The additional radial dependence found in this work suggests an outside-in suppression of star formation as that we refer to as 'outside-in quenching'. This picture was used before to explain the more centrally concentrated star formation in galaxies in denser environments in the literature (Schaefer et al 2017;Finn et al 2018;Spindler, et al 2018). An outside-in mass assembly mode in low-mass galaxies was also proposed by Pan et al (2015) to explain the negative or flat NUV − r colour gradients in these galaxies.…”

Section: Outside-in Quenchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

SDSS-IV MaNGA: environmental dependence of gas metallicity gradients in local star-forming galaxies

Lian

Thomas

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Within the standard model of hierarchical galaxy formation in a ΛCDM Universe, the environment of galaxies is expected to play a key role in driving galaxy formation and evolution. In this paper we investigate whether and how the gas metallicity and the star formation surface density (Σ SFR ) depend on galaxy environment. To this end we analyse a sample of 1162 local, star-forming galaxies from the galaxy survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA). Generally, both parameters do not show any significant dependence on environment. However, in agreement with previous studies, we find that low-mass satellite galaxies are an exception to this rule. The gas metallicity in these objects increases while their Σ SFR decreases slightly with environmental density. The present analysis of MaNGA data allows us to extend this to spatially resolved properties. Our study reveals that the gas metallicity gradients of low-mass satellites flatten and their Σ SFR gradients steepen with increasing environmental density. By extensively exploring a chemical evolution model, we identify two scenarios that are able to explain this pattern: metal-enriched gas accretion or pristine gas inflow with varying accretion timescales. The latter scenario better matches the observed Σ SFR gradients, and is therefore our preferred solution. In this model, a shorter gas accretion timescale at larger radii is required. This suggests that 'outside-in quenching' governs the star formation processes of low-mass satellite galaxies in dense environments.

show abstract

The Local Cluster Survey. I. Evidence of Outside-in Quenching in Dense Environments

Cited by 28 publications

References 103 publications

The Dawes Review 9: The role of cold gas stripping on the star formation quenching of satellite galaxies

The Dawes Review 9: The role of cold gas stripping on the star formation quenching of satellite galaxies

Resolving CO (2−1) in z ∼ 1.6 Gas-rich Cluster Galaxies with ALMA: Rotating Molecular Gas Disks with Possible Signatures of Gas Stripping

SDSS-IV MaNGA: environmental dependence of gas metallicity gradients in local star-forming galaxies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About