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Quiescent ultra-diffuse galaxies in the field originating from backsplash orbits

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 1255–1260 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are the lowest-surface-brightness galaxies known, with typical stellar masses of dwarf galaxies but sizes similar to those of larger galaxies such as the Milky Way1. The reason for their extended sizes is debated, with suggested internal processes such as angular momentum2, feedback3,4 or mergers5 versus external mechanisms6,7,8,9 or a combination of both10. Observationally, we know that UDGs are red and quiescent in groups and clusters11,12 whereas their counterparts in the field are blue and star-forming13,14,15,16. This dichotomy suggests environmental effects as the main culprits. However, this scenario is challenged by recent observations of isolated quiescent UDGs in the field17,18,19. Here we use the ΛCDM (or Λ cold dark matter, where Λ is the cosmological constant) cosmological hydrodynamical simulation to show that isolated quenched UDGs are formed as backsplash galaxies that were once satellites of another galactic, group or cluster halo but are today a few Mpc away from them. These interactions, albeit brief, remove the gas and tidally strip the outskirts of the dark matter haloes of the now quenched and seemingly isolated UDGs, which are born as star-forming field UDGs occupying dwarf-mass dark matter haloes. Quiescent UDGs may therefore be found in non-negligible numbers in filaments and voids, bearing the mark of past interactions as stripped outer haloes devoid of dark matter and gas compared to dwarfs with similar stellar content.

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Fig. 1: Definition of the UDG sample.
Fig. 2: Dichotomy in colour and star formation rate of field UDGs.
Fig. 3: Formation of red UDGs in backsplash orbits and their location in the Universe.
Fig. 4: Predicted properties of field red versus blue UDGs.

Data availability

This letter is based on snapshots, subhalo catalogues and merger trees from the cosmological hydrodynamical TNG50 simulation25,26 of the IllustrisTNG project37,38,39,40,41,42,43. These data are publicly available at https://www.tng-project.org/. ASCII tables with the simulation data for our sample of UDGs in Figs. 1, 2 and 4 are available in the public repository https://github.com/josegit88/public_data_files/tree/main/ascii_files_isolated_UDGs_TNG50. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code Availability

Scripts used for reading of and access to the snapshot, merger trees and subhalo data are publically available at the TNG database. Visualizations were made using the publicly available Py-SPHViewer code61. Any correspondence and/or request for materials pertaining to this manuscript should be directed to J.A.B.

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Acknowledgements

J.A.B. and M.G.A. acknowledge financial support from CONICET through PIP grant 11220170100527CO. L.V.S. is grateful for support from NSF grant CAREER-1945310 and NASA grant ATP-80NSSC20K0566. A.P. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through project 138713538 - SFB 881 (‘The Milky Way System’, subproject C09). D.N. acknowledges funding from the DFG through an Emmy Noether Research Group grant (NE 2441/1-1). F.M. acknowledges support through the programme ‘Rita Levi Montalcini’ of the Italian MUR. M.C. is partially supported by NSF grants AST-1518257 and AST-1815475. P.T. acknowledges support from NSF grants AST-1909933 and AST-200849 and from NASA ATP grant 80NSSC20K0502. M.V. acknowledges support from NASA ATP grants 16-ATP16-0167, 19-ATP19-0019, 19-ATP19-0020 and 19-ATP19-0167 and from NSF grants AST-1814053, AST-1814259, AST-1909831 and AST-2007355.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental, CONICET-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina

    José A. Benavides & Mario. G. Abadi

  2. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina

    José A. Benavides & Mario. G. Abadi

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Laura V. Sales

  4. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

    Annalisa Pillepich

  5. Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, Zentrum für Astronomie, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Dylan Nelson

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy ‘Augusto Righi’, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Federico Marinacci

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Michael Cooper

  8. Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Garching, Germany

    Ruediger Pakmor

  9. Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Paul Torrey

  10. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Mark Vogelsberger

  11. Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Lars Hernquist

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Contributions

The listed authors made substantial contributions to this manuscript; all co-authors read and commented on the document. J.A.B. led the analysis of the simulation, compiled observational data from the literature and made all figures. L.V.S. and M.G.A. are responsible for the original idea and mentorship of J.A.B. throughout the project. L.V.S. led the writing of the manuscript and the response to the referee report with substantial contributions from J.A.B., M.G.A., A.P., D.N., F.M. and L.H. Co-author M.C. provided the expertise on the observational consequences of the results and on the study of quenching of dwarf galaxies. A.P., D.N., F.M., R.P., P.T., M.V. and L.H. are core members of the TNG50 simulation who set up, developed and ran the simulation that this manuscript is based on.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to José A. Benavides.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Astronomy thanks Arianna Di Cintio and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–6 and discussion.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

ASCII files with data per column: stellar masses (M⊙) and three-dimensional half-mass radius (kpc).

Source Data Fig. 2

ASCII files with data per column: stellar masses (M⊙), colour (g−r) and star formation rate (M⊙ yr−1).

Source Data Fig. 4

ASCII files with data per column: stellar masses (M⊙), stellar ages (Gyr), κrot and virial masses (M⊙).

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Benavides, J.A., Sales, L.V., Abadi, M.G. et al. Quiescent ultra-diffuse galaxies in the field originating from backsplash orbits. Nat Astron 5, 1255–1260 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01458-1

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