Massive galaxies today typically are not forming stars despite being surrounded by hot gaseous halos with short central cooling times. This likely owes to some form of "quenching feedback" such as merger-driven quasar activity or radio jets emerging from central black holes. Here we implement heuristic prescriptions for these phenomena on-the-fly within cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. We constrain them by comparing to observed luminosity functions and color-magnitude diagrams from SDSS. We find that quenching from mergers alone does not produce a realistic red sequence, because 1 - 2 Gyr after a merger the remnant accretes new fuel and star formation reignites. In contrast, quenching by continuously adding thermal energy to hot gaseous halos quantitatively matches the red galaxy luminosity function and produces a reasonable red sequence. Small discrepancies remain - a shallow red sequence slope suggests that our models underestimate metal production or retention in massive red galaxies, while a deficit of massive blue galaxies may reflect the fact that observed heating is intermittent rather than continuous. Overall, injection of energy into hot halo gas appears to be a necessary and sufficient condition to broadly produce red and dead massive galaxies as observed.
We post-process galaxy star formation histories in cosmological hydrodynamics simulations to test quenching mechanisms associated with AGN. By comparing simulation results to color-magnitude diagrams and luminosity functions of SDSS galaxies, we examine whether "quasar mode" or "radio mode" AGN feedback can yield a realistic red sequence. Both cases yield red sequences distinct from the blue cloud, decent matches to the luminosity function, and galaxies that are too blue by about 0.1 magnitudes in g-r. Our merger-based prescription for quasar mode feedback, however, yields a red sequence build…
Emission and absorption lines from elements heavier than helium (metals) represent one of our strongest probes of galaxy formation physics across nearly all redshifts accessible to observations. The vast majority of simulations that model these metal lines often assume either collisional or photoionisation equilibrium, or a combination of the two. For the few simulations that have relaxed these assumptions, a redshift-dependent meta-galactic UV background or fixed spectrum is often used in the non-equilibrium photoionisation calculation, which is unlikely to be accurate in the interstellar med…
The most massive elliptical galaxies apparently formed the fastest, because the ratio of alpha elements (such as oxygen) to iron is the smallest. In fact, iron is mainly produced from type Ia supernovae on a timescale of ~ 0.1-1 billion years, while the alpha elements come from massive stars on timescales of a few tens of million years (Matteucci 1994). Reproducing such a alpha/Fe correlation has long been a severe problem for cosmological theories of galaxy formation, which envisage massive galaxies to assemble gradually from smaller progenitors, and to be characterized by a star formation hi…
We present an on-the-fly geometrical approach for shock detection and Mach number calculation in simulations employing smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). We utilize pressure gradients to select shock candidates and define up- and downstream positions. We obtain hydrodynamical states in the up- and downstream regimes with a series of normal and inverted kernel weightings parallel and perpendicular to the shock normals. Our on-the-fly geometrical Mach detector incorporates well within the SPH formalism and has low computational cost. We implement our Mach detector into the simulation code GA…
The bimodality in observed present-day galaxy colours has long been a challenge for hierarchical galaxy formation models, as it requires some physical process to quench (and keep quenched) star formation in massive galaxies. Here we examine phenomenological models of quenching by post-processing the star formation histories of galaxies from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that reproduce observations of star-forming galaxies reasonably well. We consider recipes for quenching based on major mergers, halo mass thresholds, gas temperature thresholds, and variants thereof. We compare the resu…
An analysis of more than 3000 galaxies resolved at better than 114 pc/h at z=0.62 in a LAOZI cosmological adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic simulation is performed and insights gained on star formation quenching and color migration. The vast majority of red galaxies are found to be within three virial radii of a larger galaxy, at the onset of quenching when the specific star formation rate experiences the sharpest decline to fall below ~10^{-2}-10^{-1}/Gyr (depending on the redshift). We shall thus call this mechanism "environment quenching", which encompasses satellite quenching. Two phys…
In order to understand the physical mechanisms at work during the formation of massive early-type galaxies, we performed six zoomed hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of halos in the mass range 4.3 10^12 < M_vir < 8.0 10^13 M_sun at z=0, using the Adaptive Mesh Refinement code RAMSES. These simulations explore the role of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), through jets powered by the accretion onto supermassive black holes on the formation of massive elliptical galaxies. In the absence of AGN feedback, large amounts of stars accumulate in the central galaxies to form overly massive, blue, comp…
The star formation history of galaxies is a complex process usually considered to be stochastic in nature, for which we can only give average descriptions such as the color-density relation. In this work we follow star-forming gas particles in a hydrodynamical N-body simulation back in time in order to study their initial spatial configuration. By keeping record of the time when a gas particle started forming stars we can produce gas-star isochrone surfaces delineating the surfaces of accreting gas that begin producing stars at different times. These accretion surfaces are closely packed insid…
We identify the intrinsic dependence of star formation quenching on a variety of galactic and environmental parameters, utilizing a machine learning approach with Random Forest classification. We have previously demonstrated the power of this technique to isolate causality, not mere correlation, in complex astronomical data. First, we analyze three cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (Eagle, Illustris, and IllustrisTNG), selecting snapshots spanning the bulk of cosmic history from comic noon ($z \sim 2$) to the present epoch, with stellar masses in the range $9 < \log(M_*/M_{\odot}) < 12$.…
Star formation is observed to be suppressed in group and cluster galaxies compared to the field. To gain insight into the quenching process, we have analysed ~2000 galaxies formed in the GIMIC suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. The time of quenching varies from ~2 Gyr before accretion (first crossing of r200,c) to >4 Gyr after, depending on satellite and host mass. Once begun, quenching is rapid (>~ 500 Myr) in low-mass galaxies (M* < 10^10 M_Sun), but significantly more protracted for more massive satellites. The simulations predict a substantial role of outflows driven by ram …
We use cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations with the SPH code gasoline of four haloes of mass M_{200} \sim 10^{13}\Msun to study the response of the dark matter to elliptical galaxy formation. Our simulations include metallicity dependent gas cooling, star formation, and feedback from massive stars and supernovae, but not active galactic nuclei (AGN). At z=2 the progenitor galaxies have stellar to halo mass ratios consistent with halo abundance matching, assuming a Salpeter initial mass function. However by z=0 the standard runs suffer from the well known overcooling problem, overpr…
We study the global efficiency of star formation in high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of gas discs embedded in isolated early-type and spiral galaxies. Despite using a universal local law to form stars in the simulations, we find that the early-type galaxies are offset from the spirals on the large-scale Kennicutt relation, and form stars 2 to 5 times less efficiently. This offset is in agreement with previous results on morphological quenching: gas discs are more stable against star formation when embedded in early-type galaxies due to the lower disc self-gravity and increased shear.…
The vast majority of low-mass satellite galaxies around the Milky Way and M31 appear virtually devoid of cool gas and show no signs of recent or ongoing star formation. Cosmological simulations demonstrate that such quenching is expected and is due to the harsh environmental conditions that satellites face when joining the Local Group (LG). However, recent observations of Milky Way analogues in the SAGA survey present a very different picture, showing the majority of observed satellites to be actively forming stars, calling into question the realism of current simulations and the typicality of…
The observable properties of galaxies depend on both internal processes and the external environment. In terms of the environmental role, we still do not have a clear picture of the processes driving the transformation of galaxies. The use of proxies for environment (e.g., host halo mass, distance to the N^th nearest neighbour, etc.), as opposed to the real physical conditions (e.g., hot gas density) may bear some responsibility for this. Here we propose a new method that directly links galaxies to their local environments, by using spatial cross-correlations of galaxy catalogues with maps fro…
We use the EAGLE hydrodynamical simulation to trace the quenching history of galaxies in its 10 most massive clusters. We use two criteria to identify moments when galaxies suffer significant changes in their star formation activity: {\it i)} the instantaneous star formation rate (SFR) strongest drop, $Γ_{\rm SFR}^{\rm SD}$, and {\it ii)} a "quenching" criterion based on a minimum threshold for the specific SFR of $\lesssim$ 10$^{-11}\rm yr^{-1}$. We find that a large fraction of galaxies ($\gtrsim 60\%$) suffer their $Γ_{\rm SFR}^{\rm SD}$ outside the cluster's R$_{200}$. This ``pre-processed…
We quantify the impact that a variety of galactic and environmental properties have on the quenching of star formation. We collate a sample of $\sim$ 400,000 central and $\sim$ 100,000 satellite galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7). Specifically, we consider central velocity dispersion ($σ_{c}$), stellar, halo, bulge and disk mass, local density, bulge-to-total ratio, group-centric distance and galaxy-halo mass ratio. We develop and apply a new statistical technique to quantify the impact on the quenched fraction ($f_{\rm Quench}$) of varying one parameter, whil…
Using H_delta and D_n4000 as tracers of recent or ongoing efficient star formation, we analyze the fraction of SDSS galaxies with recent or ongoing efficient star formation (GORES) in the vicinity of 268 clusters. We confirm the well-known segregation of star formation, and using Abel deprojection, we find that the fraction of GORES increases linearly with physical radius and then saturates. Moreover, we find that the fraction of GORES is modulated by the absolute line-of-sight velocity (ALOSV): at all projected radii, higher fractions of GORES are found in higher ALOSV galaxies. We model this…
We examine the cosmic growth of the red sequence in a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation that includes a heuristic prescription for quenching star formation that yields a realistic passive galaxy population today. In this prescription, halos dominated by hot gas are continually heated to prevent their coronae from fueling new star formation. Hot coronae primarily form in halos above \sim10^12 M\odot, so that galaxies with stellar masses \sim10^10.5 M\odot are the first to be quenched and move onto the red sequence at z > 2. The red sequence is concurrently populated at low masses by satellit…
We exploit the pioneering cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, EAGLE, to study how the connection between halo mass (M_halo), stellar mass (M*) and star-formation rate (SFR) evolves across redshift. Using Principal Component Analysis we identify the key axes of correlation between these physical quantities, for the full galaxy sample and split by satellite/central and low/high halo mass. The first principal component of the z=0 EAGLE galaxy population is a positive correlation between M_halo, M* and SFR. This component is particularly dominant for central galaxies in low mass haloes. The se…
I highlight three results from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that yield a realistic red sequence of galaxies: 1) Major galaxy mergers are not responsible for shutting off star-formation and forming the red sequence. Starvation in hot halos is. 2) Massive galaxies grow substantially (about a factor of 2 in mass) after being quenched, primarily via minor (1:5) mergers. 3) Hot halo quenching naturally explains why galaxies are red when they either (a) are massive or (b) live in dense environments.
Observations show a prevalence of high redshift galaxies with large stellar masses and predominantly passive stellar populations. A variety of processes have been suggested that could reduce the star formation in such galaxies to observed levels, including quasar mode feedback, virial shock heating, or galactic winds driven by stellar feedback. However, the main quenching mechanisms have yet to be identified. Here we study the origin of star formation quenching using Argo, a cosmological, hydrodynamical zoom-in simulation that follows the evolution of a massive galaxy at $z\geq{}2$. This simul…
We study the population of galaxies around galaxy clusters in the hydrodynamic simulation suite IllustrisTNG 300-1 to study the signatures of their evolutionary history on observable properties. We measure the radial number density profile, phase space distribution, and splashback radius for galaxies of different masses and colors over the redshift range $z=0-1$. The three primary physical effects which shape the galaxy distribution within clusters are the galaxy quenching, angular momentum distribution and dynamical friction. We find three distinct populations of galaxies by applying a Gaussi…
A hydrodynamical CLONE of the Virgo cluster: II. Confronting observed and synthetic galaxy population twins in a dense environment
Univ. Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 CRIStAL（里尔大学）；Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale（巴黎萨克雷大学）；University of Birmingham School of Physics and Astronomy（伯明翰大学）；Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, Sorbonne Université, CNRS（索邦大学）；Univ Lyon, Univ Lyon1, Ens de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574（里昂大学）；Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（马德里自治大学）；International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia（西澳大利亚大学）
The nature of the Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) progenitors remains still uncertain. This is a major issue for galaxy evolution models since both chemical and energetic feedback play a major role in the gas dynamics, star formation and therefore in the overall stellar evolution. The progenitor models for the SNIa available in the literature propose different distributions for regulating the explosion times of these events. These functions are known as the Delay Time Distributions (DTDs). This work is the first one in a series of papers aiming at studying five different DTDs for SNIa. Here, we impl…
