Quenching (astronomy)

In astronomy, quenching is a process in which a galaxy loses cold gas, thus strongly suppressing star formation, because stars are formed from nebulae (before star formation kickstarts with increasing metallicity) are formed from accumulated interstellar gas in the interstellar medium (ISM)^[1].^[2] Evidence suggests that active supermassive black holes drive the process. One common evolutionary path on the galaxy color–magnitude diagram may start with a blue spiral galaxy with much star formation. The black hole at its center may start growing rapidly, and somehow start quenching the galaxy, which relatively quickly transitions through the "green valley", ending up more red.^[3][4][5]

References

Schawinski, Kevin; Urry, C. Megan; Simmons, Brooke D.; Fortson, Lucy; Kaviraj, Sugata; Keel, William C.; Lintott, Chris J.; Masters, Karen L.; Nichol, Robert C.; Sarzi, Marc; Skibba, Ramin (2014-05-01). "The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early- and late-type galaxies". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 440 (1): 889–907. arXiv:1402.4814. Bibcode:2014MNRAS.440..889S. doi:10.1093/mnras/stu327. ISSN 0035-8711.

1. Williams, Matt (24 December 2015). "Nebulae: What Are They And Where Do They Come From?". UniverseToday. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
2. Schawinski, Kevin; Urry, C. Megan; Simmons, Brooke D.; Fortson, Lucy; Kaviraj, Sugata; Keel, William C.; Lintott, Chris J.; Masters, Karen L.; Nichol, Robert C.; Sarzi, Marc; Skibba, Ramin (2014-05-01). "The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early- and late-type galaxies". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 440 (1): 889–907. arXiv:1402.4814. Bibcode:2014MNRAS.440..889S. doi:10.1093/mnras/stu327. ISSN 0035-8711.
3. "The Galaxy Killer". The Daily Galaxy. 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
4. "Galactic star formation and supermassive black hole masses". phys.org. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
5. Chen, Zhu; Faber, S. M.; Koo, David C.; Somerville, Rachel S.; Primack, Joel R.; Dekel, Avishai; Rodríguez-Puebla, Aldo; Guo, Yicheng; Barro, Guillermo; Kocevski, Dale D.; Wel, A. van der (2020-07-07). "Quenching as a Contest between Galaxy Halos and Their Central Black Holes". The Astrophysical Journal. 897 (1): 102. arXiv:1909.10817. Bibcode:2020ApJ...897..102C. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab9633. ISSN 1538-4357. S2CID 202734402.