Quiescent Disks in the Early Universe
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Transcript of Quiescent Disks in the Early Universe
Elizabeth J. McGrath, Aurora Y. Kesseli,
Arjen van der Wel, Eric Bell, Guillermo Barro and the CANDELS Collaboration
QUIESCENT DISKS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
• Red sequence in place at z~2
• Growth in quiescent population (red symbols) is dramatic since z~2
• Galaxies evolve from mostly low Sersic index (open symbols) to higher Sersic (filled symbols)
FORMATION OF THE RED SEQUENCE
Bell et al. (2012)
• Strongest correlation is between Sersic index and quenched fraction for all redshift ranges.
• High Sersic = bulge dominated (?)• Consistent with merger formation scenario
SEARCH FOR A QUENCHING PARAMETER
Bell et al. (2012)
• Previous studies have found strong evidence for massive, quiescent disks, even without large central bulges (including spectroscopic confirmation of their quiescence):
QUIESCENT DISKS
McGrath et al. (2007, 2008)
n=1.49
z=1.412
ACS NIC2 Model Residuals
CANDELS
• Large area near-IR WFC3 survey.
• Particularly well-suited to the study of quenched or “passive” galaxies at z~2 that are essentially invisible at shorter, rest-frame UV wavelengths.
ACS WFC3
z = 1.6 v z Y J H
DETAILED MORPHOLOGY STUDIES
• Real galaxies aren’t as simple as pure disks or pure ellipticals.
• By convention, Sersic n<2.5 = disk-like n>2.5 = spheroidal
• With good data we can decompose an image of a galaxy into its subcomponents
POINT SPREAD FUNCTION
• “Hybrid” PSF• Stacked stars
within 2.5”• Central and
outermost pixels replaced with TinyTim model
• Drizzled in same manner as dataAvailable at
candels.ucolick.org
or by email: [email protected]
UVJ SELECTION OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES AT Z > 1
a la Labbé et al. (2005); Wuyts et al. (2007); Williams et al. (2009)
GOODS-S fromCANDELS
QUIESCENT DISKS
z = 1.29n = 4.0
z = 1.68n = 2.4
z = 1.69n = 1.9
z = 1.61n = 2.6
z = 0.90n = 2.6
• Closer inspection of “high-Sersic”, massive, quiescent galaxies has revealed a number of disk-dominated galaxies.
B/T = 0.30 B/T = 0.25 B/T = 0.25 B/T = 0.33 B/T = 0.19
• Results from Bruce et al. (2014) in the UDS + COSMOS:• 1<z<3, M*>1011 Msun
HOW COMMON ARE THESE QUIESCENT DISKS?
Bruce et al. (2014)
29% of all quiescent galaxies have B/T < 0.5.
• Expanding the sample with CANDELS/ GOODS-S:• Defined to be
disks if B/T < 0.5
• Redshift bins spaced equally in time.
HOW COMMON ARE QUIESCENT DISKS?
30% are disk-dominated at z~2
Quiescent galaxies
with M > 1010 Mo
EJM, Kesseli, et al., in prep.
10 5 4 3
Time (Gyr)
SUMMARY
• A significant fraction of quenched galaxies at high-z appear to be disk dominated.
• Spheroid formation may not be the trigger that quenches star-formation, but just an end result.
• (In)consistent with merger paradigm? • Compare number density of quiescent disks to
predictions from SAMs (e.g., Somerville et al. mock galaxy catalogs with B/T ratios).
• In-situ vs. ex-situ processes for star-formation quenching? • disk instabilities
• environment (e.g., halo quenching)