We investigate the growth of massive quiescent galaxies at $z<0.6$ based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Smithsonian Hectospec Lensing Survey---two magnitude limited spectroscopic surveys of high data quality and completeness. Our three parameter model links quiescent galaxies across cosmic time by self-consistently evolving stellar mass, stellar population age sensitive $D_n4000$ index, half-light radius and stellar velocity dispersion. Stellar velocity dispersion is a robust proxy of dark matter halo mass; we use it to connect galaxies and dark matter halos and thus empirically constrain their coevolution. The typical rate of stellar mass growth is $\sim \! 10 \,\, M_\odot \,\, \mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ and dark matter growth rates from our empirical model are remarkably consistent with N-body simulations. Massive quiescent galaxies grow by minor mergers with dark matter halos of mass $10^{10} \,\, M_\odot \lesssim M_{DM} \lesssim 10^{12} \,\, M_\odot$ and evolve parallel to the stellar mass-halo mass relation based on N-body simulations. Thus, the stellar mass-halo mass relation of massive galaxies apparently results primarily from dry minor merging.
We report two secure ($z=3.775, 4.012$) and one tentative ($z\approx3.767$) spectroscopic confirmations of massive and quiescent galaxies through $K$-band observations with Keck/MOSFIRE and VLT/X-Shooter. The stellar continuum emission, the absence of strong nebular emission lines and the lack of significant far-infrared detections confirm the passive nature of these objects, disfavoring the alternative solution of low-redshift dusty star-forming interlopers. We derive stellar masses of $\mathrm{log}(M_{\star}/M_\odot)\sim11$ and ongoing star formation rates placing these galaxies $\gtrsim 1-2…
Local galaxies are broadly divided into two main classes, star-forming (gas-rich) and quiescent (passive and gas-poor). The primary mechanism responsible for quenching star formation in galaxies and transforming them into quiescent and passive systems is still unclear. Sudden removal of gas through outflows or stripping is one of the mechanisms often proposed. An alternative mechanism is so-called "strangulation", in which the supply of cold gas to the galaxy is halted. Here we report that the difference between quiescent and star forming galaxies in terms of stellar metallicity (i.e. the frac…
So far, roughly 40 quasars with redshifts greater than z=6 have been discovered. Each quasar contains a black hole with a mass of about one billion solar masses ($10^9 M_\odot$). The existence of such black holes when the Universe was less than 1 billion years old presents substantial challenges to theories of the formation and growth of black holes and the coevolution of black holes and galaxies. Here we report the discovery of an ultra-luminous quasar, SDSS J010013.02+280225.8, at redshift z=6.30. It has an optical and near-infrared luminosity a few times greater than those of previously kno…
Ejective feedback as a quenching mechanism in the 1.5 billion years of the universe: detection of neutral gas outflow in a $z=4$ recently quenched galaxy
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies are generally thought to coevolve, so that the SMBH achieves up to about 0.2 to 0.5% of the host galaxy mass in the present day. The radiation emitted from the growing SMBH is expected to affect star formation throughout the host galaxy. The relevance of this scenario at early cosmic epochs is not yet established. We present spectroscopic observations of a galaxy at redshift z = 3.328, which hosts an actively accreting, extremely massive BH, in its final stages of growth. The SMBH mass is roughly one-tenth the mass of the entire host gal…
Everything Every Band All at Once II: The Relationship Between Optical Size and Stellar Mass Over Eight Billion Years of Cosmic History
Northwestern University(西北大学);University of Pittsburgh(匹兹堡大学);Space Telescope Science Institute(太空望远镜科学研究所);University of Colorado, Boulder(科罗拉多大学博尔德分校);Princeton University(普林斯顿大学);Swinburne University of Technology(斯威本科技大学);University of Copenhagen(哥本哈根大学);Tufts University(塔夫茨大学)
According to our current cosmological model, galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to experience many mergers over their lifetimes. The most massive of the merging galaxies will be dragged towards the disc-plane, depositing stars and dark matter into an accreted disc structure. In this work, we utilize the chemo-dynamical template developed in Ruchti et al. to hunt for accreted stars. We apply the template to a sample of 4,675 stars in the third internal data release from the Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey. We find a significant component of accreted halo stars, but find no evidence of an ac…
We report a robust sample of 10 massive quiescent galaxies at redshift, $z > 3$, selected using the first data from the JWST CEERS programme. Three of these galaxies are at $4 < z < 5$, constituting the best evidence to date for quiescent galaxies significantly before $z=4$. These extreme galaxies have stellar masses in the range log$_{10}(M_*/$M$_\odot) = 10.1-11.1$, and formed the bulk of their mass around $z \simeq 10$, with two objects having star-formation histories that suggest they had already reached log$_{10}(M_*/$M$_\odot) > 10$ by $z\gtrsim8$. We report number densities for our samp…
Early type galaxies (ETG) contain most of the stars present in the local Universe and, above a stellar mass of ~5e10 Msun, vastly outnumber spiral galaxies like the Milky Way. These massive spheroidal galaxies have, in the present day, very little gas or dust, and their stellar populations have been evolving passively for over 10 billion years. The physical mechanisms that led to the termination of star formation in these galaxies and depletion of their interstellar medium remain largely conjectural. In particular, there are currently no direct measurements of the amount of residual gas that m…
We present a detailed analysis of a large sample of spectroscopically confirmed ultra-massive quiescent galaxies (${\rm{log}}(M_{\ast}/M_{\odot})\sim11.5$) at $z\gtrsim2$. This sample comprises 15 galaxies selected in the COSMOS and UDS fields by their bright K-band magnitudes and followed up with VLT/X-shooter spectroscopy and HST/WFC3 $H_{F160W}$ imaging. These observations allow us to unambiguously confirm their redshifts ascertain their quiescent nature and stellar ages, and to reliably assess their internal kinematics and effective radii. We find that these galaxies are compact, consisten…
Most massive galaxies are thought to have formed their dense stellar cores at early cosmic epochs. However, cores in their formation phase have not yet been observed. Previous studies have found galaxies with high gas velocity dispersions or small apparent sizes but so far no objects have been identified with both the stellar structure and the gas dynamics of a forming core. Here we present a candidate core in formation 11 billion years ago, at z=2.3. GOODS-N-774 has a stellar mass of 1.0x10^11 Msun, a half-light radius of 1.0 kpc, and a star formation rate of 90[+45-20]Msun/yr. The star formi…
In the early Universe finding massive galaxies that have stopped forming stars present an observational challenge as their rest-frame ultraviolet emission is negligible and they can only be reliably identified by extremely deep near-infrared surveys. These have revealed the presence of massive, quiescent early-type galaxies appearing in the universe as early as z$\sim$2, an epoch 3 Gyr after the Big Bang. Their age and formation processes have now been explained by an improved generation of galaxy formation models where they form rapidly at z$\sim$3-4, consistent with the typical masses and ag…
We explore 7.5 billion years of evolution in the star formation activity of massive ($M_{\star}>10^{10.1}\,M_{\odot}$) cluster galaxies using a sample of 25 clusters over $0.15<z<1$ from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble and 11 clusters over $1<z<1.5$ from the IRAC Shallow Cluster Survey. Galaxy morphologies are determined visually using high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images. Using the spectral energy distribution fitting code CIGALE, we measure star formation rates, stellar masses, and 4000 Å break strengths. The latter are used to separate quiescent and star-formin…
The Euclid mission will observe well over a billion galaxies out to $z\sim6$ and beyond. This will offer an unrivalled opportunity to investigate several key questions for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. The first step for many of these studies will be the selection of a sample of quiescent and star-forming galaxies, as is often done in the literature by using well known colour techniques such as the `UVJ' diagram. However, given the limited number of filters available for the Euclid telescope, the recovery of such rest-frame colours will be challenging. We therefore investigate …
Supermassive black holes with billion solar masses are in place already within the first Gyr, however, their origin and growth in such a short lapse of time is extremely challenging to understand. Here, we discuss the formation paths of early black-hole seeds, showing the limits of light black-hole seeds from stellar origin and the expected characteristics of heavy/massive black-hole seeds originated by gas direct collapse in peculiar primordial conditions. To draw conclusions on the possible candidates and the role of the ambient medium, we use results from N-body hydrodynamic simulations inc…
We propose and test a scenario for the assembly and evolution of luminous matter in galaxies which substantially differs from that adopted by other semianalytic models. As for the dark matter (DM), we follow the detailed evolution of halos within the canonical LCDM cosmology using standard Montecarlo methods. However, when overlaying prescriptions for baryon evolution, we take into account an effect pointed out in the past few years by a number of studies mostly based on intensive N-body simulations, namely that typical halo growth occurs in two phases: an early, fast collapse phase featuring …
We use the full VIPERS redshift survey in combination with SDSS-DR7 to explore the relationships between star-formation history (using d4000), stellar mass and galaxy structure, and how these relationships have evolved since z~1. We trace the extents and evolutions of both the blue cloud and red sequence, by fitting double Gaussians to the d4000 distribution of galaxies in narrow stellar mass bins, for four redshift intervals over 0<z<1. This reveals downsizing in star formation, as the high-mass limit of the blue cloud retreats steadily with time from M*~10^11.2 M_sun at z~0.9 to M*~10^10.7 M…
Three billion years after the big bang (at redshift z=2), half of the most massive galaxies were already old, quiescent systems with little to no residual star formation and extremely compact with stellar mass densities at least an order of magnitude larger than in low redshift ellipticals, their descendants. Little is known about how they formed, but their evolved, dense stellar populations suggest formation within intense, compact starbursts 1-2 Gyr earlier (at 3<z<6). Simulations show that gas-rich major mergers can give rise to such starbursts which produce dense remnants. Sub-millimeter s…
MAGAZ3NE: Spatially Resolved Ages and Chemical Abundances of Ultra-Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z $\sim$ 3.5 using JWST/NIRSpec IFU
York University(约克大学);University of Toronto(多伦多大学);Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto(多伦多大学邓普勒天文学与天体物理研究所);University of Massachusetts, Amherst(马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校);University of California Davis(加州大学戴维斯分校);University of Wisconsin-Madison(威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校);Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science(卡内基科学机构天文台);Princeton University(普林斯顿大学)
Cool CGM MgII Absorption Across the Star-Forming, Green Valley, and Quiescent Transition
North Carolina State University(北卡罗来纳州立大学);MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research(麻省理工学院卡弗里天体物理学与空间研究所);Space Telescope Science Institute(太空望远镜科学研究所);University of Washington(华盛顿大学);University of California Santa Cruz(加州大学圣克鲁兹分校)
We study how star formation is regulated in low-mass field dwarf galaxies ($10^5 \leq M_{\star} \leq 10^6 \, \text{M}_{\odot}$), using cosmological high-resolution ($3 \, \text{pc}$) hydrodynamical simulations. Cosmic reionization quenches star formation in all our simulated dwarfs, but three galaxies with final dynamical masses of $3 \times 10^{9} \,\text{M}_{\odot}$ are subsequently able to replenish their interstellar medium by slowly accreting gas. Two of these galaxies re-ignite and sustain star formation until the present day at an average rate of $10^{-5} \, \text{M}_{\odot} \, \text{yr…
Cosmic Vine: High abundance of massive galaxies and dark matter halos in a forming cluster at z=3.44
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)(宇宙黎明中心);DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark(丹麦技术大学空间研究所);CEA, IRFU, DAp, AIM, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, Sorbonne Paris Cité, CNRS(法国原子能和替代能源委员会、法国研究与发展创新局、达普实验室、天体物理与成像实验室、巴黎萨克雷大学、巴黎西岱大学、索邦巴黎西岱大学、法国国家科学研究中心);Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso(天主教瓦莱帕尔索大学物理研究所);Instituto de Física y Astronomía, Universidad de Valparaíso(瓦尔帕莱索大学物理与天文研究所);Millennium Nucleus for Galaxies (MINGAL)(星系千年核);School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University(南京大学天文与空间科学学院)
Submillimeter bright galaxies in the early Universe are vigorously forming stars at ~1000 times higher rate than the Milky Way. A large fraction of stars is formed in the central 1 kiloparsec region, that is comparable in size to massive, quiescent galaxies found at the peak of the cosmic star formation history, and eventually the core of giant elliptical galaxies in the present-day Universe. However, the physical and kinematic properties inside a compact starburst core are poorly understood because dissecting it requires angular resolution even higher than the Hubble Space Telescope can offer…
We present an original phenomenological model to describe the evolution of galaxy number counts, morphologies, and spectral energy distributions across a wide range of redshifts (0.2<z<15) and stellar masses [Log10 M/Msun >6]. Our model follows observed mass and luminosity functions of both star-forming and quiescent galaxies, and reproduces the redshift evolution of colors, sizes, star-formation and chemical properties of the observed galaxy population. Unlike other existing approaches, our model includes a self-consistent treatment of stellar and photoionized gas emission and dust attenuatio…
We have carried out the first spatially-resolved investigation of the multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM) at high redshift, using the z=4.24 strongly-lensed sub-millimetre galaxy H-ATLASJ142413.9+022303 (ID141). We present high-resolution (down to ~350 pc) ALMA observations in dust continuum emission and in the CO(7-6), H_2O (2_{1,1} - 2_{0,2}), CI(1-0) and CI(2-1) lines, the latter two allowing us to spatially resolve the cool phase of the ISM for the first time. Our modelling of the kinematics reveals that the system appears to be dominated by a rotationally-supported gas disk with evidenc…
The stellar populations of intermediate-redshift galaxies can shed light onto the growth of massive galaxies in the last 8 billion years. We perform deep, multi-object rest-frame optical spectroscopy with IMACS/Magellan of ~70 galaxies in the E-CDFS with redshift 0.65<z<0.75, apparent magnitude R>22.7 and stellar mass >10^{10}Msun. Following the Bayesian approach adopted for previous low-redshift studies, we constrain the stellar mass, mean stellar age and stellar metallicity of individual galaxies from stellar absorption features. We characterize for the first time the dependence of stellar m…
JADES: Differing assembly histories of galaxies -- Observational evidence for bursty SFHs and (mini-)quenching in the first billion years of the Universe
A sub-100 pc view at z~5 of a Multiply-Imaged Massive Quiescent Galaxy
Tufts University(塔夫茨大学);Ben-Gurion University of the Negev(内盖夫本-古里安大学);University of Toronto(多伦多大学);Space Telescope Science Institute(太空望远镜科学研究所);The Johns Hopkins University(约翰斯·霍普金斯大学);The University of Texas at Austin(德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校)
Multiphase images of a powerful supernova-driven wind in the early Universe
Swinburne University of Technology(斯威本科技大学);ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)(ARC三维全天体物理学卓越中心);Universidad de Concepción(康塞普西翁大学);Millenium Nucleus for Galaxies(星系千年核);Caltech/IPAC(加州理工学院/红外处理与分析中心);Texas A&M University(德克萨斯农工大学);Carnegie Institution of Washington(华盛顿卡内基机构);Las Campanas Observatory(拉斯坎帕纳斯天文台);Universidad Diego Portales(迭戈·波特莱斯大学);The University of Texas at Austin(德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校);Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC)(安达卢西亚天体物理研究所(西班牙国家科研委员会))
The Euclid Space Telescope will provide deep imaging at optical and near-infrared wavelengths, along with slitless near-infrared spectroscopy, across ~15,000 sq deg of the sky. Euclid is expected to detect ~12 billion astronomical sources, facilitating new insights into cosmology, galaxy evolution, and various other topics. To optimally exploit the expected very large data set, there is the need to develop appropriate methods and software. Here we present a novel machine-learning based methodology for selection of quiescent galaxies using broad-band Euclid I_E, Y_E, J_E, H_E photometry, in com…
A decade of study has established that the molecular gas properties of star-forming galaxies follow coherent scaling relations out to z~3, suggesting remarkable regularity of the interplay between molecular gas, star formation, and stellar growth. Passive galaxies, however, are expected to be gas-poor and therefore faint, and thus little is known about molecular gas in passive galaxies beyond the local universe. Here we present deep Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of CO(2-1) emission in 8 massive (Mstar ~ 10^11 Msol) galaxies at z~0.7 selected to lie a factor o…
Hidden mass in early galaxies revealed by bottom-heavy initial mass functions
Leiden University(莱顿大学);Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science(卡内基科学研究所天文台);Yale University(耶鲁大学);University of Pittsburgh(匹兹堡大学);Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen(哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所);Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie(马克斯·普朗克天文学研究所);Universität Zürich(苏黎世大学)