Evidence for mature bulges and an inside-out quenching phase 3 billion years after the Big Bang

S. Tacchella*, C. M. Carollo, A. Renzini, N. M. Förster Schreiber, P. Lang, S. Wuyts, G. Cresci, A. Dekel, R. Genzel, S. J. Lilly, C. Mancini, S. Newman, M. Onodera, A. Shapley, L. Tacconi, J. Woo, G. Zamorani

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

246 Scopus citations

Abstract

Most present-day galaxies with stellar masses ≥1011 solar masses show no ongoing star formation and are dense spheroids. Ten billion years ago, similarly massive galaxies were typically forming stars at rates of hundreds solar masses per year. It is debated how star formation ceased, on which time scales, and how this "quenching " relates to the emergence of dense spheroids. We measured stellar mass and star-formation rate surface density distributions in star-forming galaxies at redshift 2.2 with ∼1-kiloparsec resolution. We find that, in the most massive galaxies, star formation is quenched from the inside out, on time scales less than 1 billion years in the inner regions, up to a few billion years in the outer disks. These galaxies sustain high star-formation activity at large radii, while hosting fully grown and already quenched bulges in their cores.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)314-317
Number of pages4
JournalScience
Volume348
Issue number6232
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Apr 2015

Bibliographical note

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© 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

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