The formation of massive, quiescent galaxies at cosmic noon

Robert Feldmann*, Philip F. Hopkins, Eliot Quataert, Claude Andŕe Faucher-Giguère, Dᅭsan Kerěs

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

84 Scopus citations

Abstract

The cosmic noon (z ~ 1.5-3) marked a period of vigorous star formation for most galaxies. However, about a third of the more massive galaxies at those times were quiescent in the sense that their observed stellar populations are inconsistent with rapid star formation. The reduced star formation activity is often attributed to gaseous outflows driven by feedback from supermassive black holes, but the impact of black hole feedback on galaxies in the young Universe is not yet definitively established. We analyse the origin of quiescent galaxies with the help of ultrahigh resolution, cosmological simulations that include feedback from stars but do not model the uncertain consequences of black hole feedback. We show that dark matter haloes with specific accretion rates below ~0.25-0.4 Gyr-1 preferentially host galaxies with reduced star formation rates and red broad-band colours. The fraction of such haloes in large darkmatter only simulations matches the observed fraction ofmassive quiescent galaxies (~1010-1011M). This strongly suggests that halo accretion rate is the key parameter determining which massive galaxies at z ~ 1.5-3 become quiescent. Empirical models that connect galaxy and halo evolution, such as halo occupation distribution or abundance matching models, assume a tight link between galaxy properties and the masses of their parent haloes. These models will benefit from adding the specific accretion rate of haloes as a second model parameter.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)L14-L18
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Volume458
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1 2016

Funding

RF was supported in part by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HF2-51304.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555, in part by the Theoretical Astrophysics Center at UC Berkeley, and by NASA ATP grant 12-ATP-120183. Support for PFH was provided by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NASA ATP Grant NNX14AH35G, and NSF Collaborative Research Grant #1411920 and CAREER grant #1455342. CAFG was supported by NSF through grants AST-1412836 and AST-1517491, by NASA through grant NNX15AB22G, and by Northwestern University funds. DK was supported by NSF grant AST-1412153. EQ was supported by NASA ATP grant 12-ATP-120183, a Simons Investigator award from the Simons Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Simulations were run with resources provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Programme through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, proposal SMD-14-5492. Additional computing support was provided by HEC allocation SMD-14-5189 and NSF XSEDE allocation TG-AST120025.

Keywords

  • Galaxies: evolution
  • Galaxies: formation-galaxies: high-redshift
  • Galaxies: star formation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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