2023/04/18 by Eric Rohr, Annalisa Pillepich, Dylan Nelson +5 · 1 voice · 44 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Biology #Ecology #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Jellyfish #Physics #Star formation #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stad2101
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 524(3), 3502-3525 (Oxford University Press)
arxiv published 2023/04/18 · openalex publication_date 2023/07/13 · arxiv updated 2024/04/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
ABSTRACT Jellyfish galaxies are prototypical examples of satellite galaxies undergoing strong ram pressure stripping (RPS). We analyse the evolution of 512 unique, first-infalling jellyfish galaxies from the TNG50 cosmological simulation. These have been visually inspected to be undergoing RPS sometime in the past 5 Byr (since z = 0.5), have satellite stellar masses M_⋆ \rm sat∼ 108 - 10.5 \rm M_\odot, and live in hosts with M\rm 200c∼ 1012 - 14.3 \rm M_\odot at z = 0. We quantify the cold gas (T ≤ 104.5 K) removal using the tracer particles, confirming that for these jellyfish, RPS is the dominant driver of cold gas loss after infall. Half of these jellyfish are completely gas-less by z = 0, and these galaxies have earlier infall times and smaller satellite-to-host mass ratios than their gaseous counterparts. RPS can act on jellyfish galaxies over long time-scales of ≈1.5–8 Gyr. Jellyfish in more massive hosts are impacted by RPS for a shorter time span and, at a fixed host mass, jellyfish with less cold gas at infall and lower stellar masses at z = 0 have shorter RPS time spans. While RPS may act for long periods of time, the peak RPS period – where at least 50 per cent of the total RPS occurs – begins within ≈1 Gyr of infall and lasts ≲2 Gyr. During this period, the jellyfish are at host-centric distances ∼0.2–2R200c, illustrating that much of RPS occurs at large distances from the host galaxy. Interestingly, jellyfish continue forming stars until they have lost ≈98 per cent of their cold gas. For groups and clusters in TNG50 (M\rm 200c\rm host∼ 1013 - 14.3 \rm M_\odot), jellyfish galaxies deposit more cold gas (∼ 1011 - 12 \rm M_\odot) into haloes than what exists in them at z = 0, demonstrating that jellyfish, and in general satellite galaxies, are a significant source of cold gas accretion.