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We present an analysis of the instantaneous supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion rates in a collection of 1563 post-merger galaxies drawn from the IllustrisTNG simulation. Our sample consists of galaxies that have experienced a merger in the last simulation snapshot (within ~160 Myrs of coalescence) in the redshift range 01:10 and post-merger stellar masses > $10^{10} M_{\odot}$. We find that, on average, the accretion rates of the post-mergers are ~1.7 times higher than in a control sample and that post-mergers are 3-4 times more likely to experience a luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN) phase than isolated galaxies. SMBH accretion rate enhancements persist for ~2 Gyrs after coalescence, significantly exceeding the ~500 Myr lifetime of star formation rate enhancements. We find that the presence of simultaneous enhancements in both the star formation and SMBH accretion rates depends on both the mass ratio of the merger and on the gas mass of the post-merger galaxy. Despite these accretion rate enhancements, only ~35% of post-mergers experience a luminous AGN ($L_{bol}>10^{44}$ erg/s) within 500 Myrs after coalescence, and fewer than 10\% achieve a luminosity in excess of $L_{bol}>10^{45}$ erg/s. Moreover, only ~10\% of the highest luminosity ($L_{bol}>10^{45}$ erg/s) AGN in the IllustrisTNG galaxy sample are recent mergers. Our results are therefore consistent with a picture in which mergers can (but don't always) trigger AGN activity, but where the majority of galaxies hosting high luminosity AGN are not recent mergers., Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Galaxy mergers trigger both star formation and accretion onto the central supermassive black hole. As a result of subsequent energetic feedback processes, it has long been proposed that star formation may be promptly extinguished in galaxy merger remnants. However, this prediction of widespread, rapid quenching in late stage mergers has been recently called into question with modern simulations and has never been tested observationally. Here we perform the first empirical assessment of the long-predicted end phase in the merger sequence. Based on a sample of ~500 post-mergers identified from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS), we show that the frequency of post-merger galaxies that have rapidly shutdown their star formation following a previous starburst is 30-60 times higher than expected from a control sample of non-merging galaxies. No such excess is found in a sample of close galaxy pairs, demonstrating that mergers can indeed lead to a rapid halt to star formation, but that this process only manifests after coalescence., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters

We investigate the role of galaxy mergers on supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion and star formation quenching in three state-of-the-art cosmological simulations with contrasting physics models: EAGLE, Illustris and IllustrisTNG. We find that recently coalesced 'post-mergers' in all three simulations have elevated SMBH accretion rates by factors of ~2-5. However, rapid (within 500 Myr of coalescence) quenching of star formation is rare, with incidence rates of 0.4% in Illustris, 4.5% in EAGLE and 10% in IllustrisTNG. The rarity of quenching in post-mergers results from substantial gas reservoirs that remain intact after the merger. The post-mergers that do successfully quench tend to be those that had both low pre-merger gas fractions as well as those that experience the largest gas losses. Although rare, the recently quenched fraction of post-mergers is still elevated compared to a control sample of non-mergers by factors of two in IllustrisTNG and 11 in EAGLE. Conversely, quenching is rarer in Illustris post-mergers than in their control. Recent observational results by Ellison et al. have found rapid quenching to be at least 30 times more common in post-mergers, a significantly higher excess than found in any of the simulations. Our results, therefore, indicate that whilst merger-induced SMBH accretion is a widespread prediction of the simulations, its link to quenching depends sensitively on the physics models, and that none of the subgrid models of the simulations studied here can fully capture the connection between mergers and rapid quenching seen in observations., Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Galaxy mergers are traditionally one of the favoured mechanisms for quenching star formation. To test this paradigm in the context of modern cosmological simulations, we use the IllustrisTNG simulation to investigate the impact of individual merger events on quenching (i.e. star formation rate at least 3sig below the star-forming main sequence) within 500Myr after the coalescence phase.The rate of quenching amongst recently merged galaxies is compared with a control sample that is matched in redshift, stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), black hole mass and environment.We find quenching to be uncommon among the descendants of post-merger galaxies, with only 5% of galaxies quenching within 500 Myr after the merger.Despite this low absolute rate, we find that quenching occurs in post-mergers at twice the rate of the control galaxies.The fraction of quenched post-merger descendants 1.5 Gyr after the merger becomes statistically indistinguishable from that of non-post-mergers, suggesting that mergers could speed up the quenching process in those post-mergers whose progenitors had physical conditions able to sustain effective active galactic nuclei (AGN) kinetic feedback, thus capable of removing gas from galaxies.Our results indicate that although quenching does not commonly occur promptly after coalescence, mergers nonetheless do promote the cessation of star formation in some post-mergers. We find that, in IllustrisTNG, it is the implementation of the AGN kinetic feedback that is responsible for quenching post-mergers, as well as non-post-merger controls.As a result of the released kinetic energy, galaxies experience gas loss and eventually, they will quench.Galaxies with an initially low gas fraction show a preferable pre-disposition towards quenching.The primary distinguishing factor between quenched and star-forming galaxies is gas fraction, with a sharp boundary at fgas=0.1 in TNG., 13 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Detecting galaxies when their star formation is being quenched is crucial to understand the mechanisms driving their evolution. We identify for the first time a sample of quenching galaxies selected just after the interruption of their star formation by exploiting the [O III] λ5007/H α ratio and searching for galaxies with undetected [O III]. Using a sample of ∼174000 star-forming galaxies extracted from the SDSS-DR8 at 0.04 ≤ z< 0.21, weidentify the ∼300 quenching galaxy best candidates with low [O III]/H α, out of ∼26000 galaxies without [O III] emission. They have masses between 10^{9.7} and 10^{10.8} M_{☉}, consistently with the corresponding growth of the quiescent population at these redshifts. Their main properties (i.e. star-formation rate, colours, and metallicities) are comparable to those of the star-forming population, coherently with the hypothesis of recent quenching, but preferably reside in higher-density environments. Most candidates have morphologies similar to star-forming galaxies, suggesting that no morphological transformation has occurred yet. From a survival analysis we find a low fraction of candidates (∼0.58 per cent of the star-forming population), leading to a short quenching time-scale of tQ ∼ 50 Myr and an e-folding time for the quenching history of τQ ∼ 90 Myr, and their upper limits of tQ < 0.76 Gyr and τQ

We take advantage of the publicly available LEGA-C spectroscopic survey to measure the stellar population properties of 140 individual massive and passive galaxies at $z\sim0.7$. We develop and publicly release PyLick, a flexible python code to measure UV to near-IR spectral indices. With PyLick we study the H/K ratio as a new diagnostic based on the pseudo-Lick CaII H and K indices, and find that a cut in ${\rm H/K}, Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables (including citations and appendices). Accepted for publication in ApJ

Understanding when, how and where star formation ceased (quenching) within galaxies is still a critical subject in galaxy evolution studies. Taking advantage of the new methodology developed by Quai et al. (2018) to select recently quenched galaxies, we explored the spatial information provided by IFU data to get critical insights on this process. In particular, we analyse 10 SDSS-IV MaNGA galaxies that show regions with low [O III]/H{\alpha} compatible with a recent quenching of the star formation. We compare the properties of these 10 galaxies with those of a control sample of 8 MaNGA galaxies with ongoing star formation in the same stellar mass, redshift and gas-phase metallicity range. The quenching regions found are located between 0.5 and 1.1 effective radii from the centre. This result is supported by the analysis of the average radial profile of the ionisation parameter, which reaches a minimum at the same radii, while the one of the star-forming sample shows an almost flat trend. These quenching regions occupy a total area between 15\% and 45\% of our galaxies. Moreover, the average radial profile of the star formation rate surface density of our sample is lower and flatter than that of the control sample, at any radii, suggesting a systematic suppression of the star formation in the inner part of our galaxies. Finally, the radial profile of gas-phase metallicity of the two samples have a similar slope and normalisation. Our results cannot be ascribed to a difference in the intrinsic properties of the analysed galaxies, suggesting a quenching scenario more complicated than a simple inside-out quenching., Comment: 19 pages + 5 on-line material, 22 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We propose a new methodology aimed at finding star-forming galaxies in the phase which immediately follows the star-formation (SF) quenching, based on the use of high- to low-ionization emission line ratios. These ratios rapidly disappear after the SF halt, due to the softening of the UV ionizing radiation. We focus on [O III] $\lambda$5007/H$\alpha$ and [Ne III] $\lambda$3869/[O II] $\lambda$3727, studying them with simulations obtained with the CLOUDY photoionization code. If a sharp quenching is assumed, we find that the two ratios are very sensitive tracers as they drop by a factor $\sim$ 10 within $\sim$ 10 Myr from the interruption of the SF; instead, if a smoother and slower SF decline is assumed (i.e. an exponentially declining star-formation history with $e$-folding time $\tau=$ 200 Myr), they decrease by a factor $\sim$ 2 within $\sim$ 80 Myr. We mitigate the ionization -- metallicity degeneracy affecting our methodology using pairs of emission line ratios separately related to metallicity and ionization, adopting the [N II] $\lambda$6584/[O II] $\lambda$3727 ratio as metallicity diagnostic. Using a Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxy sample, we identify 10 examples among the most extreme quenching candidates within the [O III] $\lambda$5007/H$\alpha$ vs. [N II] $\lambda$6584/[O II] $\lambda$3727 plane, characterized by low [O III] $\lambda$5007/H$\alpha$, faint [Ne III] $\lambda$3869, and by blue dust-corrected spectra and $(u-r)$ colours, as expected if the SF quenching has occurred in the very recent past. Our results also suggest that the observed fractions of quenching candidates can be used to constrain the quenching mechanism at work and its time-scales., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 19 pages, 21 figures, 1 table

We present the first estimate of age, stellar metallicity and chemical abundance ratios, for an individual early-type galaxy at high-redshift (z = 1.426) in the COSMOS field. Our analysis is based on observations obtained with the X-Shooter instrument at the VLT, which cover the visual and near infrared spectrum at high (R >5000) spectral resolution. We measure the values of several spectral absorptions tracing chemical species, in particular Magnesium and Iron, besides determining the age-sensitive D4000 break. We compare the measured indices to stellar population models, finding good agreement. We find that our target is an old (t > 3 Gyr), high-metallicity ([Z/H] > 0.5) galaxy which formed its stars at z_{form} > 5 within a short time scale ~0.1 Gyr, as testified by the strong [��/Fe] ratio ( > 0.4), and has passively evolved in the first > 3-4 Gyr of its life. We have verified that this result is robust against the choice and number of fitted spectral features, and stellar population model. The result of an old age and high-metallicity has important implications for galaxy formation and evolution confirming an early and rapid formation of the most massive galaxies in the Universe., 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS