English

Central Concentration of Asymmetric Features in Post-starburst Galaxies at $z \sim 0.8$

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-12-28 v1

Abstract

We present morphological analyses of Post-starburst galaxies (PSBs) at 0.7<z<0.90.7<z<0.9 in the COSMOS field. We fitted ultraviolet to mid-infrared multi-band photometry of objects with i<24i<24 from COSMOS2020 catalogue with population synthesis models assuming non-parametric, piece-wise constant function of star formation history, and selected 94 those galaxies that have high specific star formation rates (SSFRs) of more than 109.510^{-9.5} yr1^{-1} in 321--1000 Myr before observation and an order of magnitude lower SSFRs within recent 321 Myr. We devised a new non-parametric morphological index which quantifies concentration of asymmetric features, CAC_{A}, and measured it as well as concentration CC and asymmetry AA on the Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys IF814WI_{\rm F814W}-band images. While relatively high CC and low AA values of PSBs are similar with those of quiescent galaxies rather than star-forming galaxies, we found that PSBs show systematically higher values of CAC_{A} than both quiescent and star-forming galaxies; 36% of PSBs have logCA>0.8\log{C_{A}} > 0.8, while only 16% (2%) of quiescent (star-forming) galaxies show such high CAC_{A} values. Those PSBs with high CAC_{A} have relatively low overall asymmetry of A0.1A \sim 0.1, but show remarkable asymmetric features near the centre. The fraction of those PSBs with high CAC_{A} increases with increasing SSFR in 321--1000 Myr before observation rather than residual on-going star formation. These results and their high surface stellar mass densities suggest that those galaxies experienced a nuclear starburst in the recent past, and processes that cause such starbursts could lead to the quenching of star formation through rapid gas consumption, supernova/AGN feedback, and so on.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.06843,
  title  = {Central Concentration of Asymmetric Features in Post-starburst Galaxies at $z \sim 0.8$},
  author = {Kazuharu G. Himoto and Masaru Kajisawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.06843},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS