Andrew Wetzel 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 which environmental processes quench satellites after they fall into a host halo, following the methodology of \citet{Wetzel2013}.  First, motivated by the dearth of \emph{isolated} galaxies at $z\approx0$ with $\mstar<10^9\msun$ that are quiescent (see Introduction), our model assumes that all satellites with $\mstar(z=0)<10^9\msun$ were actively star-forming prior to first infall.  However, because many most  galaxies with $\mstar(z=0)<10^4\msun$ may have been quenched at high redshift by cosmic reionization \citep[e.g.,][]{Weisz2014a,Brown2014}, we do not model those masses. At $\mstar(z=0)=10^{4-5}\msun$, satellites' star-formation histories show a mix of complete quenching by $z\gtrsim3$ (e.g., Bootes I, Leo IV) and signs of star formation at $z\lesssim1$ (e.g., And XI, And XII, And XVI) \citep{Weisz2014a,Weisz2014c,Brown2014}, so quenching at these masses may arise from 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.  That said, the 100\% quiescent fraction for satellites at this $\mstar$ means that if both processes are responsible, both are highly efficient.  Furthermore, if the  satellites that were quenched by reionization have a similar infall-time distribution as to  those that were quenched by the host-halo environment, our modeling approach remains valid. Thus, we include this $\mstar$ in our results 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 infall times that satellites at $z=0$ experienced.