Andrew Wetzel edited abstract.tex  about 9 years ago

Commit id: 0309fac2bf5d6db359e8da196a45b26625e50807

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In the Local Group, nearly all of the dwarf  galaxies with $\mstar\lesssim10^9\msun$ ($\mstar\lesssim10^9\msun$)  that are satellites within $300\kpc$ (the virial radius) of the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) have quiescent star formation and little-to-no cold gas. This contrasts strongly with comparatively isolated dwarf galaxies, which are almost all actively star-forming and gas-rich.  This near dichotomy implies a \emph{rapid} transformation after falling into the halos of the MW or M31.  We combine the observed quiescent fractions for satellites of the MW and M31 with the infall times of satellites from the ELVIS suite of cosmological simulations to determine the typical timescales over which environmental processes within the MW/M31 halos remove gas and quench star formation in low-mass  satellite galaxies. The quenching timescales at for satellites with  $\mstar<10^8\msun$ are short, $\lesssim2\gyr$, and decrease with decreasing satellite mass. at lower $\mstar$.  %and are comparable to a virial-radius crossing time.  These quenching timescales can be $1-2\gyr$ longer if environmental preprocessing in lower-mass groups prior to MW/M31 infall is important.  We compare with timescales for more massive satellites from previous works, which indicates that the environmental quenching timescale increases rapidly with satellite mass, $\mstar$,  peaking at $\approx9.5\gyr$ for $\mstar\approx10^9\msun$, $\mstar\sim10^9\msun$,  and rapidly decreases at higher satellite mass $\mstar$  to less than $5\gyr$ at $\mstar>5\times10^9\msun$. Thus, satellites with masses $\mstar\sim10^9\msun$,  similar to the Magellanic Clouds Magellanic-Cloud masses,  exhibit the longest environmental quenching timescales.