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The environmental dependence of gas accretion onto galaxies: quenching satellites through starvation

van de Voort, F.; Bahé, Y.M.; Bower, R.G.; Correa, C.A.; Crain, R.A.; Schaye, J.; Theuns, T.

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Authors

F. van de Voort

Y.M. Bahé

R.G. Bower

C.A. Correa

R.A. Crain

J. Schaye



Abstract

Galaxies that have fallen into massive haloes may no longer be able to accrete gas from their surroundings: a process referred to as ‘starvation’ or ‘strangulation’ of satellites. We study the environmental dependence of gas accretion on to galaxies using the cosmological, hydrodynamical EAGLE simulation. We quantify the dependence of gas accretion on stellar mass, redshift, and environment, using halo mass and galaxy overdensity as environmental indicators. We find a strong suppression, of many orders of magnitude, of the gas accretion rate in dense environments, primarily for satellite galaxies. This suppression becomes stronger at lower redshift. However, the scatter in accretion rates is very large for satellites. This is (at least in part) due to the variation in the halocentric radius, since gas accretion is more suppressed at smaller radii. Central galaxies are influenced less strongly by their environment and exhibit less scatter in their gas accretion rates. The star formation rates of both centrals and satellites show similar behaviour to their gas accretion rates. The relatively small differences between gas accretion and star formation rates demonstrate that galaxies generally exhaust their gas reservoir somewhat faster at higher stellar mass, lower redshift, and in denser environments. We conclude that the environmental suppression of gas accretion could directly result in the quenching of star formation.

Citation

van de Voort, F., Bahé, Y., Bower, R., Correa, C., Crain, R., Schaye, J., & Theuns, T. (2017). The environmental dependence of gas accretion onto galaxies: quenching satellites through starvation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 466(3), 3460-3471. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw3356

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 21, 2016
Online Publication Date Dec 23, 2016
Publication Date Apr 21, 2017
Deposit Date Feb 27, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 466
Issue 3
Pages 3460-3471
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw3356

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2016 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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