Masters Defense: Quenching and Structural Evolution of Blue, Green, and Red Nuggets in the RESOLVE survey

Speaker: Derrick Carr

We present a complete z ∼ 0 sample of nuggets (extremely compact galaxies) at all evolutionary stages within the REsolved

Spectroscopy Of a Local VolumE (RESOLVE) survey. This sample spans near 3 orders of magnitude

in stellar mass (M∗ ∼ 10^8.25M⊙ to M∗ ∼ 10^11M⊙), making it the first to unify the dwarf and giant

nugget regimes. We develop selection criteria for our z ∼ 0 sample of nuggets across mass scales

that improve upon past selection criteria and justify our use of environmental and dynamical criteria

to eliminate nugget-like objects with formation mechanisms other than compaction. The resulting

z ∼ 0 nugget sample follows expectations with respect to general properties (e.g. star-formation

activity, density, size). This sample is the first to confirm that both halo-mass

dependent permanent quenching and cyclic temporary quenching, as seen in simulated nuggets, also

apply to observed nuggets, which is evident in the emergence of the red nugget population above a

threshold scale of Mhalo ∼ 10^11.4M⊙ and the scatter of the nugget population around the Star-Forming

Main Sequence below the threshold scale. We also assess the structural evolution of nuggets as they undergo the blue-to-red transition and find tentative evidence of disk regrowth during the quenching process.

Dec 7th, 10:30 am to 11:30 am via zoom

Zoom link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/94995486892?pwd=Qy81OFA4SFBhQlh5QStaUlUwZkE5dz09

Passcode: 316944