# What Is Inside Matters: Simulated Green Valley Galaxies Have Centrally Concentrated Star Formation

## TL;DR

This study compares simulated galaxy star formation profiles with observations, revealing that simulations show centrally concentrated star formation in Green Valley galaxies, suggesting outside-in quenching contrary to observed inside-out quenching.

## Contribution

First to analyze radial specific star formation rate profiles in simulated galaxies, highlighting discrepancies with observations and constraining feedback models in galaxy simulations.

## Key findings

- Simulated profiles agree loosely with observations for star-forming galaxies.
- Green Valley galaxies in simulations show central star formation concentration.
- Simulations conflict with observations by indicating outside-in quenching.

## Abstract

In spatially resolved galaxy observations, star formation rate radial profiles are found to correlate with total specific star formation rates. A central depletion in star formation is thought to correlate with the globally depressed star formation rates of, for example, galaxies within the Green Valley. We present, for the first time, radial specific star formation rate profiles for a statistical sample of simulated galaxies from the Illustris and EAGLE large cosmological simulations. For galaxies on the star-forming sequence, simulated specific star formation rate profiles are in loose agreement with observations, although galaxies from the EAGLE simulation are too centrally peaked, and galaxies from Illustris have a steeper decline at large radii. However, both galaxy samples show centrally concentrated star formation for galaxies in the Green Valley at all galaxy stellar masses, indicating that quenching occurs from the outside-in, in strong conflict with observations of inside-out quenching. These results appear in spite of the different feedback models in these two simulations. We conclude that the distribution of star formation within galaxies is a strong additional constraint for star formation and feedback models in simulations, in particular related to the quenching of star formation.