21 research outputs found
HI properties of massive galaxies from stacking
Galaxies have been found to divide into two families: one dominated by late-type, star forming, blue objects, which are rich in cold gas and have a low stellar mass surface density (mu*); the other is made of early-type, red and
passive galaxies with higher mu* and on average low gas content. The physical mechanisms responsible for the galaxy transition between the active and passive regime are still debated. In the high mass range, mechanisms proposed to quench the star formation (SF) through cold gas heating or depletion are not efficient enough to reproduce the correct red sequence of passive systems, when implemented in models of galaxy evolution. Input for a better understanding of
the physics of quenching mechanisms, and of their relative importance and efficiency, can come from a comparison of the cold atomic neutral hydrogen (HI) content and SF for a statistically significant sample of massive systems where
quenching is at work. However, existing surveys do not sample this high mass, gas poor regime well enough. In this work, we study the HI properties of a volume-limited sample of ~5000 nearby galaxies with stellar mass M*>10^10 Msun, selected from the state-of-the-art blind HI survey ALFALFA to have optical and ultraviolet data so that star formation and galaxy properties can be derived. As ALFALFA does not sample with sufficient sensitivity the high mass, gas poorest range, we developed a software tool to co-add its data, in order to obtain average gas properties of galaxy classes which individually may be largely undetected.
Using this technique, we study three types of quenching processes, namely the presence of a bulge component, feedback from an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and environmental mechanisms acting on the interstellar medium. Simulations of early-type galaxies with non star-forming HI disks have suggested that the presence of a bulge can stabilize the gas, thus preventing star formation, but
on average we do not observe this. We find that, once mu* and NUV-r colours are fixed, the HI gas fraction in massive bulge- and disk-dominated galaxies is the same. A similar negative result is obtained if we compare M_HI/M* of AGN hosts and control galaxies, despite simulations that invoke feedback from AGN to heat or deplete cold gas in
massive systems. The relation we observe between the cold gas content and the accretion rate in the red population actually points towards a co-evolution of SF and AGN activity, both driven by the amount of gas available. The last class of quenching mechanisms studied in this work includes environmental processes, which are known to affect the SF properties of galaxies and, at least in rich clusters, their cold gas content. For the first time, though, we study the effect of the environment on the HI content as a continuous function of local density, comparing it with global and inner specific star formation rate. The gradual increase in the suppression of SF from the inner to the outer regions that we observe, and the even stronger HI deficiency as a function of increasing local density, can be explained by a mechanism acting on the disk from the outside-in, like ram-pressure stripping of the HI. A comparison with mock catalogs from models, which include only removal of the hot gas, shows how
models underestimate environmental effects, especially on the cold gas component of galaxies.
We therefore suggest that, in order to improve our understanding of the galaxy bimodality in the local Universe, observations and models should particularly
focus on environmental mechanisms acting on the cold interstellar medium. These processes are efficient over a broader range of local densities than previously thought,
and could solve parts of the puzzle in the formation of massive and passive systems
ALFALFA HI Data Stacking III. Comparison of environmental trends in HI gas mass fraction and specific star formation rate
It is well known that both the star formation rate and the cold gas content
of a galaxy depend on the local density out to distances of a few Megaparsecs.
In this paper, we compare the environmental density dependence of the atomic
gas mass fractions of nearby galaxies with the density dependence of their
central and global specific star formation rates. We stack HI line spectra
extracted from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey centered on galaxies with UV
imaging from GALEX and optical imaging/spectroscopy from SDSS. We use these
stacked spectra to evaluate the mean atomic gas mass fraction of galaxies in
bins of stellar mass and local density. For galaxies with stellar masses less
than 10^10.5 M_sun, the decline in mean atomic gas mass fraction with density
is stronger than the decline in mean global and central specific star formation
rate. The same conclusion does not hold for more massive galaxies. We interpret
our results as evidence for ram-pressure stripping of atomic gas from the outer
disks of low mass satellite galaxies. We compare our results with the
semi-analytic recipes of Guo et al. (2011) implemented on the Millennium II
simulation. These models assume that only the diffuse gas surrounding satellite
galaxies is stripped, a process that is often termed "strangulation". We show
that these models predict relative trends in atomic gas and star formation that
are in disagreement with observations. We use mock catalogues generated from
the simulation to predict the halo masses of the HI-deficient galaxies in our
sample. We conclude that ram-pressure stripping is likely to become effective
in dark matter halos with masses greater than 10^13 M_sun.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey. VIII. Final Data Release -- The Effect of Group Environment on the Gas Content of Massive Galaxies
We present the final data release from the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS),
a large Arecibo program that measured the HI properties for an unbiased sample
of ~800 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts
0.025<z<0.05. This release includes new Arecibo observations for 250 galaxies.
We use the full GASS sample to investigate environmental effects on the cold
gas content of massive galaxies at fixed stellar mass. The environment is
characterized in terms of dark matter halo mass, obtained by cross-matching our
sample with the SDSS group catalog of Yang et al. Our analysis provides, for
the first time, clear statistical evidence that massive galaxies located in
halos with masses of 10^13-10^14 Msun have at least 0.4 dex less HI than
objects in lower density environments. The process responsible for the
suppression of gas in group galaxies most likely drives the observed quenching
of the star formation in these systems. Our findings strongly support the
importance of the group environment for galaxy evolution, and have profound
implications for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation, which currently do
not allow for stripping of the cold interstellar medium in galaxy groups.Comment: 36 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with
supplementary material available at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/pubs.php . GASS released data can be
found at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/data.ph
Gas-Bearing Early-Type Dwarf Galaxies in Virgo: Evidence for Recent Accretion
We investigate the dwarf (M_B> -16) galaxies in the Virgo cluster in the
radio, optical, and ultraviolet regimes. Of the 365 galaxies in this sample, 80
have been detected in HI by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey. These
detections include 12 early-type dwarfs which have HI and stellar masses
similar to the cluster dwarf irregulars and BCDs. In this sample of 12, half
have star-formation properties similar to late type dwarfs, while the other
half are quiescent like typical early-type dwarfs. We also discuss three
possible mechanisms for their evolution: that they are infalling field galaxies
that have been or are currently being evolved by the cluster, that they are
stripped objects whose gas is recycled, and that the observed HI has been
recently reaccreted. Evolution by the cluster adequately explains the
star-forming half of the sample, but the quiescent class of early-type dwarfs
is most consistent with having recently reaccreted their gas.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure
The clustering of galaxies as a function of their photometrically-estimated atomic gas content
We introduce a new photometric estimator of the HI mass fraction (M_HI/M_*)
in local galaxies, which is a linear combination of four parameters: stellar
mass, stellar surface mass density, NUV-r colour, and g-i colour gradient. It
is calibrated using samples of nearby galaxies (0.025<z<0.05) with HI line
detections from the GASS and ALFALFA surveys, and it is demonstrated to provide
unbiased M_HI/M_* estimates even for HI-rich galaxies. We apply this estimator
to a sample of ~24,000 galaxies from the SDSS/DR7 in the same redshift range.
We then bin these galaxies by stellar mass and HI mass fraction and compute
projected two point cross-correlation functions with respect to a reference
galaxy sample. Results are compared with predictions from current semi-analytic
models of galaxy formation. The agreement is good for galaxies with stellar
masses larger than 10^10 M_sun, but not for lower mass systems. We then extend
the analysis by studying the bias in the clustering of HI-poor or HI-rich
galaxies with respect to galaxies with normal HI content on scales between 100
kpc and ~5 Mpc. For the HI-deficient population, the strongest bias effects
arise when the HI-deficiency is defined in comparison to galaxies of the same
stellar mass and size. This is not reproduced by the semi-analytic models,
where the quenching of star formation in satellites occurs by "starvation" and
does not depend on their internal structure. HI-rich galaxies with masses
greater than 10^10 M_sun are found to be anti-biased compared to galaxies with
"normal" HI content. Interestingly, no such effect is found for lower mass
galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, slightly
revised in the tex
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey. IV. Baryonic Mass-Velocity-Size Relations of Massive Galaxies
We present dynamical scaling relations for a homogeneous and representative
sample of ~500 massive galaxies, selected only by stellar mass (>10^10 Msun)
and redshift (0.025<z<0.05) as part of the ongoing GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey.
We compare baryonic Tully-Fisher (BTF) and Faber-Jackson (BFJ) relations for
this sample, and investigate how galaxies scatter around the best fits obtained
for pruned subsets of disk-dominated and bulge-dominated systems. The BFJ
relation is significantly less scattered than the BTF when the relations are
applied to their maximum samples, and is not affected by the inclination
problems that plague the BTF. Disk-dominated, gas-rich galaxies systematically
deviate from the BFJ relation defined by the spheroids. We demonstrate that by
applying a simple correction to the stellar velocity dispersions that depends
only on the concentration index of the galaxy, we are able to bring disks and
spheroids onto the same dynamical relation -- in other words, we obtain a
generalized BFJ relation that holds for all the galaxies in our sample,
regardless of morphology, inclination or gas content, and has a scatter smaller
than 0.1 dex. We find that disks and spheroids are offset in the stellar
dispersion-size relation, and that the offset is removed when corrected
dispersions are used instead. The generalized BFJ relation represents a
fundamental correlation between the global dark matter and baryonic content of
galaxies, which is obeyed by all (massive) systems regardless of morphology.
[abridged]Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. GASS
publications and released data can be found at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/index.ph
ALFALFA HI Data Stacking I. Does the Bulge Quench Ongoing Star Formation in Early-Type Galaxies?
We have carried out an HI stacking analysis of a volume-limited sample of
~5000 galaxies with imaging and spectroscopic data from GALEX and the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey, which lie within the current footprint of the Arecibo
Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) Survey. Our galaxies are selected to have stellar
masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts in the range 0.025<z<0.05. We
extract a sub-sample of 1833 "early-type" galaxies with inclinations less than
70deg, with concentration indices C>2.6 and with light profiles that are well
fit by a De Vaucouleurs model. We then stack HI line spectra extracted from the
ALFALFA data cubes at the 3-D positions of the galaxies from these two samples
in bins of stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, central velocity
dispersion, and NUV-r colour. We use the stacked spectra to estimate the
average HI gas fractions M_HI/M_* of the galaxies in each bin.
Our main result is that the HI content of a galaxy is not influenced by its
bulge. The average HI gas fractions of galaxies in both our samples correlate
most strongly with NUV-r colour and with stellar surface density. The relation
between average HI fraction and these two parameters is independent of
concentration index C. We have tested whether the average HI gas content of
bulge-dominated galaxies on the red sequence, differs from that of late-type
galaxies on the red sequence. We find no evidence that galaxies with a
significant bulge component are less efficient at turning their available gas
reservoirs into stars. This result is in contradiction with the "morphological
quenching" scenario proposed by Martig et al. (2009).Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with
high resolution figures available at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/pubs.ph
COLD GASS, an IRAM legacy survey of molecular gas in massive galaxies: I. Relations between H2, HI, stellar content and structural properties
We are conducting COLD GASS, a legacy survey for molecular gas in nearby
galaxies. Using the IRAM 30m telescope, we measure the CO(1-0) line in a sample
of ~350 nearby (D=100-200 Mpc), massive galaxies (log(M*/Msun)>10.0). The
sample is selected purely according to stellar mass, and therefore provides an
unbiased view of molecular gas in these systems. By combining the IRAM data
with SDSS photometry and spectroscopy, GALEX imaging and high-quality Arecibo
HI data, we investigate the partition of condensed baryons between stars,
atomic gas and molecular gas in 0.1-10L* galaxies. In this paper, we present CO
luminosities and molecular hydrogen masses for the first 222 galaxies. The
overall CO detection rate is 54%, but our survey also uncovers the existence of
sharp thresholds in galaxy structural parameters such as stellar mass surface
density and concentration index, below which all galaxies have a measurable
cold gas component but above which the detection rate of the CO line drops
suddenly. The mean molecular gas fraction MH2/M* of the CO detections is
0.066+/-0.039, and this fraction does not depend on stellar mass, but is a
strong function of NUV-r colour. Through stacking, we set a firm upper limit of
MH2/M*=0.0016+/-0.0005 for red galaxies with NUV-r>5.0. The average
molecular-to-atomic hydrogen ratio in present-day galaxies is 0.3, with
significant scatter from one galaxy to the next. The existence of strong
detection thresholds in both the HI and CO lines suggests that "quenching"
processes have occurred in these systems. Intriguingly, atomic gas strongly
dominates in the minority of galaxies with significant cold gas that lie above
these thresholds. This suggests that some re-accretion of gas may still be
possible following the quenching event.Comment: Accepted for publications in MNRAS. 32 pages, 25 figure
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey. I. Gas Fraction Scaling Relations of Massive Galaxies and First Data Release
We introduce the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an on-going large program
that is gathering high quality HI-line spectra using the Arecibo radio
telescope for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater
than 10^10 Msun and redshifts 0.025<z<0.05, selected from the SDSS
spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys. The galaxies are observed until
detected or until a low gas mass fraction limit (1.5-5%) is reached. This paper
presents the first Data Release, consisting of ~20% of the final GASS sample.
We use this data set to explore the main scaling relations of HI gas fraction
with galaxy structure and NUV-r colour. A large fraction (~60%) of the galaxies
in our sample are detected in HI. We find that the atomic gas fraction
decreases strongly with stellar mass, stellar surface mass density and NUV-r
colour, but is only weakly correlated with galaxy bulge-to-disk ratio (as
measured by the concentration index of the r-band light). We also find that the
fraction of galaxies with significant (more than a few percent) HI decreases
sharply above a characteristic stellar surface mass density of 10^8.5 Msun
kpc^-2. The fraction of gas-rich galaxies decreases much more smoothly with
stellar mass. One of the key goals of GASS is to identify and quantify the
incidence of galaxies that are transitioning between the blue, star-forming
cloud and the red sequence of passively-evolving galaxies. Likely transition
candidates can be identified as outliers from the mean scaling relations
between gas fraction and other galaxy properties. [abridged]Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with
high resolution figures available at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/pubs.ph
The impact of interactions, bars, bulges, and AGN on star formation efficiency in local massive galaxies
Using observations from the GASS and COLD GASS surveys and complementary data
from SDSS and GALEX, we investigate the nature of variations in gas depletion
time observed across the local massive galaxy population. The large and
unbiased COLD GASS sample allows us to assess the relative importance of galaxy
interactions, bar instabilities, morphologies and the presence of AGN in
regulating star formation efficiency. Both the H2 mass fraction and depletion
time vary as a function of the distance of a galaxy from the main sequence in
the SFR-M* plane. The longest gas depletion times are found in below-main
sequence bulge-dominated galaxies that are either gas-poor, or else on average
less efficient than disk-dominated galaxy at converting into stars any cold gas
they may have. We find no link between AGN and these long depletion times. The
galaxies undergoing mergers or showing signs of morphological disruptions have
the shortest molecular gas depletion times, while those hosting strong stellar
bars have only marginally higher global star formation efficiencies as compared
to matched control samples. Our interpretation is that depletion time
variations are caused by changes in the ratio between the gas mass traced by
the CO(1-0) observations, and the gas mass in high density star-forming cores,
with interactions, mergers and bar instabilities able to locally increase
pressure and raise the ratio of efficiently star-forming gas to CO-detected
gas. Building a sample representative of the local massive galaxy population,
we derive a global Kennicutt-Schmidt relation of slope 1.18+/-0.24, and observe
structure within the scatter around this relation, with galaxies having low
(high) stellar mass surface densities lying systematically above (below) the
mean relation, suggesting that gas surface density is not the only parameter
driving the global star formation ability of a galaxy.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Ap