Quenching of star formation from a lack of inflowing gas to galaxies

Katherine E Whitaker; Christina C Williams; Lamiya Mowla; Justin S Spilker; Sune Toft; Desika Narayanan; Alexandra Pope; Georgios E Magdis; Pieter G van Dokkum; Mohammad Akhshik; Rachel Bezanson; Gabriel B Brammer; Joel Leja; Allison Man; Erica J Nelson; Johan Richard; Camilla Pacifici; Keren Sharon; Francesco Valentino

doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03806-7

Quenching of star formation from a lack of inflowing gas to galaxies

Nature. 2021 Sep;597(7877):485-488. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03806-7. Epub 2021 Sep 22.

Authors

Katherine E Whitaker^{1

2}, Christina C Williams³, Lamiya Mowla⁴, Justin S Spilker⁵, Sune Toft^{6

7}, Desika Narayanan^{6

8}, Alexandra Pope⁹, Georgios E Magdis^{6

7

10}, Pieter G van Dokkum¹¹, Mohammad Akhshik¹², Rachel Bezanson¹³, Gabriel B Brammer^{6

7}, Joel Leja^{14

15

16}, Allison Man¹⁷, Erica J Nelson¹⁸, Johan Richard¹⁹, Camilla Pacifici²⁰, Keren Sharon²¹, Francesco Valentino^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA. [email protected].
² Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Copenhagen, Denmark. [email protected].
³ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
⁴ Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
⁶ Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁷ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁸ Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
¹⁰ DTU-Space, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark.
¹¹ Astronomy Department, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
¹² Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
¹³ Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁵ Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁶ Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁸ Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
¹⁹ Université Lyon, Université Lyon 1, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574, Saint-Genis-Laval, France.
²⁰ Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
²¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

PMID: 34552255
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03806-7

Abstract

Star formation in half of massive galaxies was quenched by the time the Universe was 3 billion years old¹. Very low amounts of molecular gas seem to be responsible for this, at least in some cases^2-7, although morphological gas stabilization, shock heating or activity associated with accretion onto a central supermassive black hole are invoked in other cases^8-11. Recent studies of quenching by gas depletion have been based on upper limits that are insufficiently sensitive to determine this robustly^2-7, or stacked emission with its problems of averaging^8,9. Here we report 1.3 mm observations of dust emission from 6 strongly lensed galaxies where star formation has been quenched, with magnifications of up to a factor of 30. Four of the six galaxies are undetected in dust emission, with an estimated upper limit on the dust mass of 0.0001 times the stellar mass, and by proxy (assuming a Milky Way molecular gas-to-dust ratio) 0.01 times the stellar mass in molecular gas. This is two orders of magnitude less molecular gas per unit stellar mass than seen in star forming galaxies at similar redshifts^12-14. It remains difficult to extrapolate from these small samples, but these observations establish that gas depletion is responsible for a cessation of star formation in some fraction of high-redshift galaxies.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.