The Suppression of Star Formation on the Smallest Scales: What Role Does Environment Play?

TL;DR

This study investigates whether environmental factors or reionization primarily suppressed star formation in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, finding that reionization likely played the dominant role, with environment being largely insignificant.

Contribution

The paper uses N-body simulations to show that environment is unlikely to be the main cause of star formation suppression in ultra-faint dwarfs, emphasizing reionization's role.

Findings

Environmental quenching probability is less than 0.1%.

Reionization likely caused star formation suppression below a stellar mass of 10^5 M_sun.

Predicted large population of quenched ultra-faint dwarfs in the Local Field.

Abstract

The predominantly ancient stellar populations observed in the lowest-mass galaxies (i.e. ultra-faint dwarfs) suggest that their star formation was suppressed by reionization. Most of the well-studied ultra-faint dwarfs, however, are within the central half of the Milky Way dark matter halo, such that they are consistent with a population that was accreted at early times and thus potentially quenched via environmental processes. To study the potential role of environment in suppressing star formation on the smallest scales, we utilize the Exploring the Local Volume in Simulations (ELVIS) suite of $N$-body simulations to constrain the distribution of infall times for low-mass subhalos likely to host the ultra-faint population. For the ultra-faint satellites of the Milky Way with star-formation histories inferred from $Hubble~Space~Telescope$ imaging, we find that environment is highly unlikely to play a dominant role in quenching their star formation. Even when including the potential effects of pre-processing, there is a $\lesssim 0.1\%$ probability that environmental processes quenched all of the known ultra-faint dwarfs early enough to explain their observed star-formation histories. Instead, we argue for a mass floor in the effectiveness of satellite quenching at roughly $M_{\star} \sim 10^{5}~M_{\odot}$, below which star formation in surviving galaxies is globally suppressed by reionization. We predict a large population of quenched ultra-faint dwarfs in the Local Field ($1 < R/R_{\rm{vir}} < 2$), with as many as $\sim250$ to be discovered by future wide-field imaging surveys.