CANDELS Sheds Light on the Environmental Quenching of Low-mass Galaxies Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Abstract We investigate the environmental quenching of galaxies, especially those with stellar masses (M *)<109.5 M , beyond the local universe. Essentially all local low-mass quenched galaxies (QGs) are believed to live close to massive central galaxies, which is a demonstration of environmental quenching. We use CANDELS data to test whether or not such a dwarf QG-massive central galaxy connection exists beyond the local universe. For this purpose, we only need a statistically representative, rather than complete, sample of low-mass galaxies, which enables our study to z1.5. For each low-mass galaxy, we measure the projected distance (d proj) to its nearest massive neighbor (M *>1010.5 M ) within a redshift range. At a given z and M *, the environmental quenching effect is considered to be observed if the d proj distribution of QGs ( ) is significantly skewed toward lower values than that of star-forming galaxies ( ). For galaxies with 108 M <M *<1010 M , such a difference between and is detected up to z1. Also, about 10% of the quenched galaxies in our sample are located between two and four virial radii (R Vir) of the massive halos. The median projected distance from low-mass QGs to their massive neighbors, , decreases with satellite M * at M *109.5 M , but increases with satellite M * at M *109.5 M . This trend suggests a smooth, if any, transition of the quenching timescale around M *109.5 M at 0.5<z<1.0.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS

altmetric score

  • 1.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Guo, Y., Bell, E. F., Lu, Y. u., Koo, D. C., Faber, S. M., Koekemoer, A. M., ... Santini, P.

citation count

  • 28

complete list of authors

  • Guo, Yicheng||Bell, Eric F||Lu, Yu||Koo, David C||Faber, SM||Koekemoer, Anton M||Kurczynski, Peter||Lee, Seong-Kook||Papovich, Casey||Chen, Zhu||Dekel, Avishai||Ferguson, Henry C||Fontana, Adriano||Giavalisco, Mauro||Kocevski, Dale D||Nayyeri, Hooshang||Perez-Gonzalez, Pablo G||Pforr, Janine||Rodriguez-Puebla, Aldo||Santini, Paola

publication date

  • June 2017