COLD GASS, an IRAM Legacy Survey of Molecular Gas in Massive Galaxies: III. Comparison with semi-analytic models of galaxy formation

TL;DR

This study compares semi-analytic galaxy formation models with the COLD GASS survey data, revealing strengths in gas partitioning predictions but discrepancies in quenching mechanisms and the role of bulge formation.

Contribution

It identifies limitations of current models in reproducing observed quenching patterns and emphasizes the importance of bulge-related processes in galaxy gas depletion.

Findings

Models accurately predict gas partitioning by stellar mass and surface density.

Models fail to reproduce the tight relation between stellar surface density and bulge-to-disk ratio.

Quenching correlates with bulge-to-disk ratio and surface density, not stellar mass.

Abstract

We compare the semi-analytic models of galaxy formation of Fu et al. (2010), which track the evolution of the radial profiles of atomic and molecular gas in galaxies, with gas fraction scaling relations derived from the COLD GASS survey (Saintonge et al 2011). The models provide a good description of how condensed baryons in galaxies with gas are partitioned into stars, atomic and molecular gas as a function of galaxy stellar mass and surface density. The models do not reproduce the tight observed relation between stellar surface density and bulge-to-disk ratio for this population. We then turn to an analysis of the"quenched" population of galaxies without detectable cold gas. The current implementation of radio-mode feedback in the models disagrees strongly with the data. In the models, gas cooling shuts down in nearly all galaxies in dark matter halos above a mass of 10**12 M_sun. As a result, stellar mass is the observable that best predicts whether a galaxy has little or no neutral gas. In contrast, our data show that quenching is largely independent of stellar mass. Instead, there are clear thresholds in bulge-to-disk ratio and in stellar surface density that demarcate the location of quenched galaxies. We propose that processes associated with bulge formation play a key role in depleting the neutral gas in galaxies and that further gas accretion is suppressed following the formation of the bulge, even in dark matter halos of low mass.