http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0850
One of the most striking properties of galaxies is the bimodality in their star-formation rates. A major puzzle is why any given galaxy is star-forming or quiescent, and a wide range of physical mechanisms have been proposed as solutions. We consider how observations, such as might be available in upcoming large galaxy surveys, might distinguish different galaxy quenching scenarios. To do this, we combine an N-body simulation and multiple prescriptions from the literature to create several quiescent galaxy mock catalogues. Each prescription uses a different set of galaxy properties (such as history, environment, centrality) to assign individual simulation galaxies as quiescent. We find how and how much the resulting quiescent galaxy distributions differ from each other, both intrinsically and observationally. In addition to tracing observational consequences of different quenching mechanisms, our results indicate which sorts of quenching models might be most readily disentangled by upcoming observations and which combinations of observational quantities might provide the most discriminatory power.
Tue, 5 Nov 13
12/73
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