Quenching (astronomy)

In astronomy, quenching is a process in which a galaxy loses cold gas, thus strongly suppressing star formation.[1] 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 lots of star formation. The black hole at its center may start growing rapidly, and somehow start quenching the galaxy, which relatively quickly transitions thru the "green valley", ending up more red.[2][3][4]

References

1. 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. doi:10.1093/mnras/stu327. ISSN 0035-8711.
2. ""The Galaxy Killer"". The Daily Galaxy. 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
3. "Galactic star formation and supermassive black hole masses". phys.org. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
4. 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. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab9633. ISSN 1538-4357.