Dan Weisz edited quenching_time.tex  about 9 years ago

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We now translate the quiescent fractions in Figure~\ref{fig:quiescent_fraction} into the typical timescales over environmental processes quench satellites after they fall into a host halo, following the methodology of \citet{Wetzel2013}.  First, motivated by the dearth of isolated dwarf galaxies that are quiescent (see Introduction), our model assumes that all satellite dwarf galaxies were actively star-forming prior to first virial infall.  Because ultra-faint dwarfs at $\mstar<10^4\msun$ likely many galaxies $\mstar(z=0)<10^4\msun$ may be  quenched at high redshift via due to  cosmic reionization \citep[e.g.,][]{Weisz2014a,Brown2014}, we do not model those masses. Star-formation histories for satellites at $\mstar=10^{4-5}\msun$ $\mstar(z=0)=10^{4-5}\msun$  show a mix of them having completely quenched by $z\gtrsim3$ (e.g., Bootes I, Leo IV) and showing signs of star formation at $z\lesssim1$ (e.g., And XI, And XII) \citep{Weisz2014a,Brown2014}, \citep{Weisz2014a,Brown2014} \textbf{XXX most importantly And XVI from Weisz et al. 2014c},  so quenching at these masses may be driven by a mix of reionization and the host-halo environment. %Leo T had recent star formation, suggesting that galaxies at least down to logM_star ~ 5 can form stars today if not for environment.  Though, the 100\% quiescent fraction for satellites at this $\mstar$ means that if both processes are responsible, both are highly efficient, and that if satellites that were quenched by reionization have a similar virial-infall time distribution as those that were quenched by the host-halo environment, it would not affect our results.  Thus, we include this $\mstar$ in our modeling but label it distinctly to emphasize caution in interpretation. 

Within each 1-dex bin of $\mstar$, we use the ELVIS simulations to compute the distribution of virial-infall times that satellites at $z=0$ experienced.  Assuming that environmental quenching likelihood correlates with time since infall, we designate those that fell in earliest as having been quenched, and we adjust the time-since-infall threshold for quenching until we match the observed quiescent fraction in each bin.  Several works have shown that this model successfully describes the dependence of satellite quiescent fractions on host-centric distance \citep[e.g.,][]{Wetzel2013, Wetzel2014, Wheeler2014} because of the correlation of virial-infall time with host-centric distance \citep[e.g.,][]{Wetzel2015}. \textbf{XXX what about Rocha et al.? XXX}  However, this correlation means that we should account for observed satellite's distances, including incompleteness for fainter satellites, in computing their infall times.  Thus, in selecting satellites in ELVIS, we only use those out to the maximum host-centric distance that they are observed from the MW or M31 at each $\mstar$ bin.  While this matters for the fainter satellites, it is most important for the highest masses, $\mstar=10^{8-9}$, at which all known satellites (M32, NGC 205, LMC/SMC) lie within $<61\kpc$ of the MW or M31.