Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Shengdong Lu
Dandan Xu
Sen Wang
Yunchong Wang
Shude Mao
Xiaoyang Xia
Mark Vogelsberger
Lars Hernquist
Abstract： Galaxy morphologies, kinematics, and stellar populations are thought to be linked to each other. However, both simulations and observations have pointed out mismatches therein. In this work, we study the nature and origin of the present-day quenched, bulge-dominated, but dynamically cold galaxies within a stellar mass range of $10.3\,\leqslant\,\log\,M_{\ast}/\mathrm{M_{\odot}}\,\leqslant\,11.2$ in the IllustrisTNG-100 Simulation. We compare these galaxies with a population of normal star-forming dynamically cold disc galaxies and a population of normal quenched dynamically hot elliptical galaxies within the same mass range. The populations of the present-day quenched and bulge-dominated galaxies (both being dynamically cold and hot) used to have significantly higher star-formation rates and flatter morphologies at redshift of $z\sim 2$. They have experienced more frequent larger mass-ratio mergers below $z \sim 0.7$ in comparison to their star-forming disc counterparts, which is responsible for the formation of their bulge-dominated morphologies. The dynamically cold populations (both being star-forming and quenched) have experienced more frequent prograde and tangential mergers especially below $z \sim 1$, in contrast to the dynamically hot ellipticals, which have had more retrograde and radial mergers. Such different merging histories can well explain the differences on the cold and hot dynamical status among these galaxies. We point out that the real-world counterparts of these dynamically cold and hot bulge-dominated quenched populations are the fast- and slow-rotating early-type galaxies, respectively, as seen in observations and hence reveal the different evolution paths of these two distinct populations of early-type galaxies.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Shengdong Lu
Dandan Xu
Sen Wang
Zheng Cai
Chuan He
C. Kevin Xu
Xiaoyang Xia
Shude Mao
Volker Springel
Lars Hernquist
Abstract： The gas needed to sustain star formation in galaxies is supplied by the circumgalactic medium (CGM), which in turn is affected by accretion from large scales. In a series of two papers, we examine the interplay between a galaxy's ambient CGM and central star formation within the context of the large-scale environment. We use the IllustrisTNG-100 simulation to show that the influence exerted by the large-scale galaxy environment on the CGM gas angular momentum results in either enhanced (Paper I) or suppressed (Paper II, this paper) star formation inside a galaxy. We find that for present-day quenched galaxies, both the large-scale environments and the ambient CGM have always had higher angular momenta throughout their evolutionary history since at least $z=2$, in comparison to those around present-day star-forming disk galaxies, resulting in less efficient gas inflow into the central star-forming gas reservoirs. A sufficiently high CGM angular momentum, as inherited from the larger-scale environment, is thus an important factor in keeping a galaxy quenched, once it is quenched. The process above naturally renders two key observational signatures: (1) a coherent rotation pattern existing across multiple distances from the large-scale galaxy environment, to the circumgalactic gas, to the central stellar disk; and (2) an anti-correlation between galaxy star-formation rates and orbital angular momenta of interacting galaxy pairs or groups.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Lan Wang
Zheng Zheng
Cai-Na Hao
Rui Guo
Ran Li
Lei Qian
Lizhi Xie
Yong Shi
Hu Zou
Yixian Cao
Yanmei Chen
Xiaoyang Xia
Abstract： A sample of 279 massive red spirals was selected optically by Guo et al. (2020), among which 166 galaxies have been observed by the ALFALFA survey. In this work, we observe HI content of the rest 113 massive red spiral galaxies using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). 75 of the 113 galaxies have HI detection with a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) greater than 4.7. Compared with the red spirals in the same sample that have been observed by the ALFALFA survey, galaxies observed by FAST have on average a higher S/N, and reach to a lower HI mass. To investigate why many red spirals contain a significant amount of HI mass, we check color profiles of the massive red spirals using images observed by the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. We find that galaxies with HI detection have bluer outer disks than the galaxies without HI detection, for both ALFALFA and FAST samples. For galaxies with HI detection, there exists a clear correlation between galaxy HI mass and g-r color at outer radius: galaxies with higher HI masses have bluer outer disks. The results indicate that optically selected massive red spirals are not fully quenched, and the HI gas observed in many of the galaxies may exist in their outer blue disks.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract： Distance-redshift diagrams probe expansion history of the Universe. We show that the stellar mass-binding energy (massE) relation of galaxies proposed in our previous study offers a new distance ruler at cosmic scales. By using elliptical galaxies in the main galaxy sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, we construct a distance-redshift diagram over the redshift range from 0.05 to 0.2 with the massE ruler. The best-fit dark energy density is 0.675+-0.079 for flat Lambda-CDM, consistent with those by other probes. At the median redshift of 0.11, the median distance is estimated to have a fractional error of 0.34%, much lower than those by supernova (SN) Ia and baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) and even exceeding their future capability at this redshift. The above low-z measurement is useful for probing dark energy that dominates at the late Universe. For a flat dark energy equation of state model (flat wCDM), the massE alone constrains w to an error that is only a factor of 2.2, 1.7 and 1.3 times larger than those by BAO, SN Ia, and cosmic microwave background (CMB), respectively.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract： We investigate the star formation histories (SFHs) of massive red spiral galaxies with stellar mass $M_\ast>10^{10.5}M_\odot$, and make comparisons with blue spirals and red ellipticals of similar masses. We make use of the integral field spectroscopy from the SDSS-IV/DR15 MaNGA sample, and estimate spatially resolved SFHs and stellar population properties of each galaxy by applying a Bayesian spectral fitting code to the MaNGA spectra. We find that both red spirals and red ellipticals have experienced only one major star formation episode at early times, and the result is independent of the adopted SFH model. On average, more than half of their stellar masses were formed $>$10 Gyrs ago, and more than 90\% were formed $>6$ Gyrs ago. The two types of galaxies show similarly flat profiles in a variety of stellar population parameters: old stellar ages indicated by $D4000$ (the spectral break at around 4000\AA), high stellar metallicities, large Mgb/Fe ratios indicating fast formation, and little stellar dust attenuation. In contrast, although blue spirals also formed their central regions $>$10 Gyrs ago, both their central regions and outer disks continuously form stars over a long timescale. Our results imply that, massive red spirals are likely to share some common processes of formation (and possibly quenching) with massive red ellipticals in the sense that both types were formed at $z > 2$ through a fast formation process.Possible mechanisms for the formation and quenching of massive red spirals are discussed.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract： In this study we demonstrate that stellar masses of galaxies (Mstar) are universally correlated through a double power law function with the product of the dynamical velocities (Ve) and sizes to one-fourth power (Re^0.25) of galaxies, both measured at the effective radii. The product VeRe^0.25 represents the fourth root of the total binding energies within effective radii of galaxies. This stellar mass-binding energy correlation has an observed scatter of 0.14 dex in log(VeRe^0.25) and 0.46 dex in log(Mstar). It holds for a variety of galaxy types over a stellar mass range of nine orders of magnitude, with little evolution over cosmic time. A toy model of self-regulation between binding energies and supernovae feedback is shown to be able to reproduce the observed slopes, but the underlying physical mechanisms are still unclear. The correlation can be a potential distance estimator with an uncertainty of 0.2 dex independent of the galaxy type.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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