What halts the growth of galaxies?

TL;DR

This paper empirically compares the roles of star-formation outflows, jet heating, and AGN radiation in halting galaxy growth, revealing their varying importance across galaxy masses and cosmic time.

Contribution

It provides a systematic, observation-driven analysis of the relative importance of different feedback mechanisms in galaxy evolution across mass and time.

Findings

Star formation-driven outflows dominate in low-mass galaxies.

Jet heating prevents growth in massive galaxies today.

All three processes are similarly important at redshifts 1-3.

Abstract

The gas reservoir of galaxies can be altered by outflows driven by star-formation and luminous active galactic nuclei. Jets heating the surroundings of host galaxies can also prevent gas cooling and inflows. Spectacular examples for these three mass displacement channels have been observed, but their importance in transforming the galaxy population depends on the occurrence rates of outflow triggers. We aim to investigate the absolute and relative importance of these three channels. In an observation-driven approach, we combine distribution functions and scaling relations to empirically compare average outflow rates across the galaxy total stellar mass spectrum and across cosmic time. This hinges on local outflow studies which should be extended to systematic, large and diverse samples, and we do not yet consider a halo heating effect by radiation-driven outflows. Our results show, independent of simulations, the dominance of star formation-driven outflows in low-mass galaxies. Massive galaxies today are predominately prevented from growing further by jet heating, while at $z=1-3$ all three processes are approximately similarly important. Over the full mass spectrum and cosmic history, outflows driven by the radiation from active galactic nuclei is never the dominant process.