TY - JOUR
T1 - Quenching Timescales of Dwarf Satellites around Milky Way-mass Hosts
AU - Akins, Hollis B.
AU - Christensen, Charlotte R.
AU - Brooks, Alyson M.
AU - Munshi, Ferah
AU - Applebaum, Elaad
AU - Engelhardt, Anna
AU - Chamberland, Lucas
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the U.S. NSF under CAREER grant AST-1848107. A.M.B. is partially supported by NSF grant AST-1813871. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..
PY - 2021/3/10
Y1 - 2021/3/10
N2 - Observations of the low-mass satellites in the Local Group have shown high fractions of gas-poor, quiescent galaxies relative to isolated dwarfs, implying that the host halo environment plays an important role in the quenching of dwarf galaxies. In this work, we present measurements of the quenched fractions and quenching timescales of dwarf satellite galaxies in the DC Justice League suite of four high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass halos. We show that these simulations accurately reproduce the satellite luminosity functions of observed nearby galaxies, as well as the variation in satellite quenched fractions from M ∗ ∼ 105 M o˙ to 1010 M o˙. We then trace the histories of satellite galaxies back to z ∼ 15 and find that many satellites with M ∗ ∼ 106-108 M o˙ quench within ∼2 Gyr of infall into the host halo, while others in the same mass range remain star-forming for as long as 5 Gyr. We show that this scatter can be explained by the satellite's gas mass and the ram pressure it feels at infall. Finally, we identify a characteristic stellar mass scale of 108 M o˙ above which infalling satellites are largely resistant to rapid environmental quenching.
AB - Observations of the low-mass satellites in the Local Group have shown high fractions of gas-poor, quiescent galaxies relative to isolated dwarfs, implying that the host halo environment plays an important role in the quenching of dwarf galaxies. In this work, we present measurements of the quenched fractions and quenching timescales of dwarf satellite galaxies in the DC Justice League suite of four high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass halos. We show that these simulations accurately reproduce the satellite luminosity functions of observed nearby galaxies, as well as the variation in satellite quenched fractions from M ∗ ∼ 105 M o˙ to 1010 M o˙. We then trace the histories of satellite galaxies back to z ∼ 15 and find that many satellites with M ∗ ∼ 106-108 M o˙ quench within ∼2 Gyr of infall into the host halo, while others in the same mass range remain star-forming for as long as 5 Gyr. We show that this scatter can be explained by the satellite's gas mass and the ram pressure it feels at infall. Finally, we identify a characteristic stellar mass scale of 108 M o˙ above which infalling satellites are largely resistant to rapid environmental quenching.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/abe2ab
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/abe2ab
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85103240132
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 909
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 139
ER -