4.7 Article

Are galactic star formation and quenching governed by local, global, or environmental phenomena?

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 492, Issue 1, Pages 96-139

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz3264

Keywords

galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; galaxies: star formation; galaxies: statistics; galaxies: structure

Funding

  1. European Research Council (ERC) [695671 'QUENCH']
  2. Science and Technology FacilitiesCouncil (STFC)
  3. Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) [CB-285080, FC-2016-01-1916]
  4. Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant
  5. Mobilising European Research in Astrophysics & Cosmology (MERAC) Foundation
  6. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  7. National Science Foundation
  8. U.S. Department of Energy
  9. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  10. Japanese Monbukagakusho
  11. Max Planck Society
  12. Higher Education Funding Council for England
  13. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
  14. Center for HighPerformance Computing at the University of Utah
  15. [PAPIIT-DGAPA-IA101217]
  16. STFC [ST/M001172/1] Funding Source: UKRI

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We present an analysis of star formation and quenching in the SDSS-IV MaNGA-DR15, utilizing over 5 million spaxels from similar to 3500 local galaxies. We estimate star formation rate surface densities (Sigma(SFR)) via dust corrected H alpha flux where possible, and via an empirical relationship between specific star formation rate (sSFR) and the strength of the 4000 angstrom break (D4000) in all other cases. We train a multilayered artificial neural network (ANN) and a random forest (RF) to classify spaxels into 'star-forming' and 'quenched' categories given various individual (and groups of) parameters. We find that global parameters (pertaining to the galaxy as a whole) perform collectively the best at predicting when spaxels will be quenched, and are substantially superior to local/spatially resolved and environmental parameters. Central velocity dispersion is the best single parameter for predicting quenching in central galaxies. We interpret this observational fact as a probable consequence of the total integrated energy from active galactic neucleus (AGN) feedback being traced by the mass of the black hole, which is well known to correlate strongly with central velocity dispersion. Additionally, we train both an ANN and RF to estimate Sigma(SFR) values directly via regression in star-forming regions. Local/spatially resolved parameters are collectively the most predictive at estimating Sigma(SFR) in these analyses, with stellar mass surface density at the spaxel location (Sigma(*)) being by far the best single parameter. Thus, quenching is fundamentally a global process but star formation is governed locally by processes within each spaxel.

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