TY - JOUR

T1 - Quenching of star formation from a lack of inflowing gas to galaxies

AU - Whitaker, Katherine E.

AU - Williams, Christina C.

AU - Mowla, Lamiya

AU - Spilker, Justin S.

AU - Toft, Sune

AU - Narayanan, Desika

AU - Pope, Alexandra

AU - Magdis, Georgios E.

AU - van Dokkum, Pieter G.

AU - Akhshik, Mohammad

AU - Bezanson, Rachel

AU - Brammer, Gabriel B.

AU - Leja, Joel

AU - Man, Allison

AU - Nelson, Erica J.

AU - Richard, Johan

AU - Pacifici, Camilla

AU - Sharon, Keren

AU - Valentino, Francesco

PY - 2021/9/23

Y1 - 2021/9/23

N2 - Star formation in half of massive galaxies was quenched by the time the Universe was 3 billion years old(1). 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.The authors report 1.3 mm observations of dust emission from strongly lensed galaxies where star formation is quenched, demonstrating that gas depletion is responsible for the cessation of star formation in some high-redshift galaxies.

AB - Star formation in half of massive galaxies was quenched by the time the Universe was 3 billion years old(1). 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.The authors report 1.3 mm observations of dust emission from strongly lensed galaxies where star formation is quenched, demonstrating that gas depletion is responsible for the cessation of star formation in some high-redshift galaxies.

KW - STELLAR POPULATION SYNTHESIS

KW - QUIESCENT GALAXIES

KW - ELLIPTIC GALAXIES

KW - DUST

KW - FRACTIONS

KW - I.

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-021-03806-7

DO - 10.1038/s41586-021-03806-7

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 34552255

VL - 597

SP - 485

EP - 488

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7877

ER -