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1. Tidal disruption of star clusters in galaxy formation simulations

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1751  

   Meng, Xi ; Gnedin, Oleg Y. ( June 2022 , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   We investigate the evolution of the tidal field experienced by massive star clusters using cosmological simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies. Clusters in our simulations experience the strongest tidal force in the first few hundred Myr after formation, when the maximum eigenvalue of the tidal tensor reaches several times 104 Gyr−2. After about 1 Gyr the tidal field plateaus at a lower value, with the median λm ∼ 3 × 103 Gyr−2. The fraction of time clusters spend in high tidal strength (λm > 3 × 104 Gyr−2) regions also decreases with their age from ∼20 per cent immediately after formation to less than 1 per cent after 1 Gyr. At early ages both the in situ and ex situ clusters experience similar tidal fields, while at older ages the in situ clusters in general experience stronger tidal field due to their lower orbits in host galaxy. This difference is reflected in the survival of clusters: we looked into cluster disruption calculated in simulation runtime and found that ex situ star clusters of the same initial mass typically end up with higher bound fraction at the last available simulation snapshot than the in situ ones.
2. Star Formation Suppression by Tidal Removal of Cold Molecular Gas from an Intermediate-redshift Massive Post-starburst Galaxy

   https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac75ea  

   Spilker, Justin S. ; Suess, Katherine A. ; Setton, David J. ; Bezanson, Rachel ; Feldmann, Robert ; Greene, Jenny E. ; Kriek, Mariska ; Lower, Sidney ; Narayanan, Desika ; Verrico, Margaret ( August 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal Letters)

   Observations and simulations have demonstrated that star formation in galaxies must be actively suppressed to prevent the formation of overly massive galaxies. Galactic outflows driven by stellar feedback or supermassive black hole accretion are often invoked to regulate the amount of cold molecular gas available for future star formation but may not be the only relevant quenching processes in all galaxies. We present the discovery of vast molecular tidal features extending up to 64 kpc outside of a massivez= 0.646 post-starburst galaxy that recently concluded its primary star-forming episode. The tidal tails contain (1.2 ± 0.1) × 10¹⁰M_⊙of molecular gas, 47% ± 5% of the total cold gas reservoir of the system. Both the scale and magnitude of the molecular tidal features are unprecedented compared to all known nearby or high-redshift merging systems. We infer that the cold gas was stripped from the host galaxies during the merger, which is most likely responsible for triggering the initial burst phase and the subsequent suppression of star formation. While only a single example, this result shows that galaxy mergers can regulate the cold gas contents in distant galaxies by directly removing a large fraction of the molecular gas fuel, and plausiblymore »suppress star formation directly, a qualitatively different physical mechanism than feedback-driven outflows.

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3. Mergers, starbursts, and quenching in the simba simulation

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz2580  

   Rodríguez Montero, Francisco ; Davé, Romeel ; Wild, Vivienne ; Anglés-Alcázar, Daniel ; Narayanan, Desika ( September 2019 , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   We use the simba cosmological galaxy formation simulation to investigate the relationship between major mergers ($\lesssim$4:1), starbursts, and galaxy quenching. Mergers are identified via sudden jumps in stellar mass M* well above that expected from in situ star formation, while quenching is defined as going from specific star formation rate (sSFR) $\gt t_{\rm H}^{-1}$ to $\lt 0.2t_{\rm H}^{-1}$, where tH is the Hubble time. At z ≈ 0–3, mergers show ∼2–3× higher SFR than a mass-matched sample of star-forming galaxies, but globally represent $\lesssim 1{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the cosmic SF budget. At low masses, the increase in SFR in mergers is mostly attributed to an increase in the H2 content, but for $M_*\gtrsim 10^{10.5} \,\mathrm{ M}_{\odot }$ mergers also show an elevated star formation efficiency suggesting denser gas within merging galaxies. The merger rate for star-forming galaxies shows a rapid increase with redshift, ∝(1 + z)3.5, but the quenching rate evolves much more slowly, ∝(1 + z)0.9; there are insufficient mergers to explain the quenching rate at $z\lesssim 1.5$. simba first quenches galaxies at $z\gtrsim 3$, with a number density in good agreement with observations. The quenching time-scales τq are strongly bimodal, with ‘slow’ quenchings (τq ∼ 0.1tH) dominating overall,more »but ‘fast’ quenchings (τq ∼ 0.01tH) dominating in M* ∼ 1010–1010.5 M$\odot$ galaxies, likely induced by simba’s jet-mode black hole feedback. The delay time distribution between mergers and quenching events suggests no physical connection to either fast or slow quenching. Hence, simba predicts that major mergers induce starbursts, but are unrelated to quenching in either fast or slow mode.

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4. Extremely massive disc galaxies in the nearby Universe form through gas-rich minor mergers

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac058  

   Jackson, R. A. ; Kaviraj, S. ; Martin, G. ; Devriendt, J. E. G. ; Noakes-Kettel, E. A. ; Silk, J. ; Ogle, P. ; Dubois, Y. ( January 2022 , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   In our hierarchical structure-formation paradigm, the observed morphological evolution of massive galaxies – from rotationally supported discs to dispersion-dominated spheroids – is largely explained via galaxy merging. However, since mergers are likely to destroy discs, and the most massive galaxies have the richest merger histories, it is surprising that any discs exist at all at the highest stellar masses. Recent theoretical work by our group has used a cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation to suggest that extremely massive (M* > 1011.4 M⊙) discs form primarily via minor mergers between spheroids and gas-rich satellites, which create new rotational stellar components and leave discs as remnants. Here, we use UV-optical and H i data of massive galaxies, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA surveys, to test these theoretical predictions. Observed massive discs account for ∼13 per cent of massive galaxies, in good agreement with theory (∼11 per cent). ∼64 per cent of the observed massive discs exhibit tidal features, which are likely to indicate recent minor mergers, in the deep DECaLS images (compared to ∼60 per cent in their simulated counterparts). The incidence of these features is at least four times higher than in low-mass discs, suggesting that,more »as predicted, minor mergers play a significant (and outsized) role in the formation of these systems. The empirical star formation rates agree well with theoretical predictions and, for a small galaxy sample with H i detections, the H i masses and fractions are consistent with the range predicted by the simulation. The good agreement between theory and observations indicates that extremely massive discs are indeed remnants of recent minor mergers between spheroids and gas-rich satellites.

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5. The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey: Circumgalactic medium pollution and gas mixing by tidal stripping in a merging system at z ∼ 4.57

   https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038284  

   Ginolfi, M. ; Jones, G. C. ; Béthermin, M. ; Faisst, A. ; Lemaux, B. C. ; Schaerer, D. ; Fudamoto, Y. ; Oesch, P. ; Dessauges-Zavadsky, M. ; Fujimoto, S. ; et al ( November 2020 , Astronomy & Astrophysics)

   We present ALMA observations of a merging system at z  ∼ 4.57, observed as a part of the ALMA Large Program to INvestigate [CII] at Early times (ALPINE) survey. Combining ALMA [CII]158  μ m and far-infrared continuum data with multi-wavelength ancillary data, we find that the system is composed of two massive ( M ⋆  ≳ 10 10   M ⊙ ) star-forming galaxies experiencing a major merger (stellar mass ratio r mass  ≳ 0.9) at close spatial (∼13 kpc; projected) and velocity (Δ v  <  300 km s −1 ) separations, and two additional faint narrow [CII]-emitting satellites. The overall system belongs to a larger scale protocluster environment and is coincident to one of its overdensity peaks. Additionally, ALMA reveals the presence of [CII] emission arising from a circumgalactic gas structure, extending up to a diameter-scale of ∼30 kpc. Our morpho-spectral decomposition analysis shows that about 50% of the total flux resides between the individual galaxy components, in a metal-enriched gaseous envelope characterised by a disturbed morphology and complex kinematics. Similarly to observations of shock-excited [CII] emitted from tidal tails in local groups, our results can be interpreted as a possible signature of interstellar gas stripped by strong gravitational interactions, with a possible contributionmore »from material ejected by galactic outflows and emission triggered by star formation in small faint satellites. Our findings suggest that mergers could be an efficient mechanism of gas mixing in the circumgalactic medium around high- z galaxies, and thus play a key role in the galaxy baryon cycle at early epochs.« less