M. S. Yun, Alvio Renzini, Georgios E. Magdis, Marie Martig, Grant W. Wilson, Itziar Aretxaga, Francesco Valentino, Veronica Strazzullo, Emanuele Daddi, R. Gobat, Ho Seong Hwang, Frédéric Bournaud, Alexis Finoguenov, Matthieu Béthermin, Mark Sargent, Shuowen Jin, School of Mathematics (KIAS Séoul), Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS), Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation (AIM (UMR_7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112)), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7), National Observatory of Athens (NOA), Dark Cosmology Centre (DARK), Niels Bohr Institute [Copenhagen] (NBI), Faculty of Science [Copenhagen], University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-Faculty of Science [Copenhagen], University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU), Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (OAPD), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), University of Massachusetts [Amherst] (UMass Amherst), University of Massachusetts System (UMASS), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), Gobat, R., Daddi, E., Magdis, G., Bournaud, F., Sargent, M., Martig, M., Jin, S., Finoguenov, A., Béthermin, M., Hwang, H. S., Renzini, A., Wilson, G. W., Aretxaga, I., Yun, M., Strazzullo, V., Valentino, F., Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation (AIM (UMR7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112)), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (UCPH)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (UCPH)-Faculty of Science [Copenhagen], University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (UCPH)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (UCPH), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES), and Department of Physics more...
Early type galaxies (ETG) contain most of the stars present in the local Universe and, above a stellar mass of ~5e10 Msun, vastly outnumber spiral galaxies like the Milky Way. These massive spheroidal galaxies have, in the present day, very little gas or dust, and their stellar populations have been evolving passively for over 10 billion years. The physical mechanisms that led to the termination of star formation in these galaxies and depletion of their interstellar medium remain largely conjectural. In particular, there are currently no direct measurements of the amount of residual gas that might be still present in newly quiescent spheroids at high redshift. Here we show that quiescent ETGs at z~1.8, close to their epoch of quenching, contained 2-3 orders of magnitude more dust at fixed stellar mass than local ETGs. This implies the presence of substantial amounts of gas (5-10%), which was however consumed less efficiently than in more active galaxies, probably due to their spheroidal morphology, and consistently with our simulations. This lower star formation efficiency, and an extended hot gas halo possibly maintained by persistent feedback from an active galactic nucleus (AGN), combine to keep ETGs mostly passive throughout cosmic time., Comment: 16 pages, 4 main figures main, 7 supplementary figures, 2 supplementary tables; accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy more...