Star Formation Isochrone Surfaces: Clues on Star Formation Quenching in Dense Environments
Abstract
The star formation history of galaxies is a complex process usually considered to be stochastic in nature, for which we can only give average descriptions such as the color-density relation. In this work we follow star-forming gas particles in a hydrodynamical N-body simulation back in time in order to study their initial spatial configuration. By keeping record of the time when a gas particle started forming stars we can produce gas-star isochrone surfaces delineating the surfaces of accreting gas that begin producing stars at different times. These accretion surfaces are closely packed inside dense regions, intersecting each other, and as a result galaxies inside proto-clusters stop accreting gas early, naturally explaining the color dependence on density. The process described here has a purely gravitational / geometrical origin, arguably operating at a more fundamental level than complex processes such as AGN and supernovae, and providing a conceptual origin for the color-density relation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1412.1119,
title = {Star Formation Isochrone Surfaces: Clues on Star Formation Quenching in Dense Environments},
author = {M. A. Aragon-Calvo and Mark C. Neyrinck and Joseph Silk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.1119},
year = {2014}
}