Andrew Wetzel edited abstract.tex  about 9 years ago

Commit id: e16dcb1ea539d37fba02e6ca5622fb1183fd3044

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In the Local Group, nearly all of the dwarf galaxies at $\mstar\lesssim10^9\msun$ ($\mstar\lesssim10^9\msun$)  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 that environmental processes within a \emph{rapid} transformation after falling into  the halos halo  of the MW and M31 \emph{rapidly} remove gas and quench star formation in satellite dwarfs after infall. MW/M31.  We combine the observed quiescent fractions for satellites of the MW/M31 with the virial-infall times of satellites from the ELVIS suite of cosmological simulationsof MW/M31-like halos  to determine the typical timescales over which environmental processes remove gas and  quench star formation in  satellite dwarf galaxies. The quenching timescales at $\mstar<10^8\msun$ are short, $<2-3\gyr$, depending somewhat on whether environmental preprocessing in lower-mass groups is important, $\lesssim2\gyr$,  and decrease with decreasing satellite mass.  %and  are comparable to a virial-radius crossing time. We compare These timescales can increase $1-2\gyr$ if environmental preprocessing in lower-mass groups prior to MW/M31 infall is important.  Comparing  with timescales for more massive satellites from the literature, which implies previous works indicates  that the  environmental quenching timescale increases rapidly with satellite mass to $\approx9.5\gyr$ and peak  at $\approx9.5\gyr$ for  $\mstar\approx10^9\msun$,but it then  rapidly decreases with at higher satellite  mass to less than $5\gyr$ at $\mstar>5\times 10^9\msun$. $\mstar>5\times10^9\msun$.  Thus, satellites with masses similar to the Magellanic Clouds exhibit the longest environmental quenching timescales.