ALMA reveals diverse dust-to-gas mass ratios and quenching modes in old quiescent galaxies
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| Natura: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Lorenzon, Giuliano Donevski, Darko Man, Allison W. S. Romano, Michael Whitaker, Katherine E. Belli, Sirio Liu, Daizhong Lee, Minju M. Narayanan, Desika Long, Arianna Shivaei, Irene Nanni, Ambra Lisiecki, Krzysztof Sawant, Prasad Rodighiero, Giulia Damjanov, Ivana Junais Dave, Romeel Pappalardo, Ciro Lovell, Christopher Hamed, Mahmoud |
| author_facet | Lorenzon, Giuliano Donevski, Darko Man, Allison W. S. Romano, Michael Whitaker, Katherine E. Belli, Sirio Liu, Daizhong Lee, Minju M. Narayanan, Desika Long, Arianna Shivaei, Irene Nanni, Ambra Lisiecki, Krzysztof Sawant, Prasad Rodighiero, Giulia Damjanov, Ivana Junais Dave, Romeel Pappalardo, Ciro Lovell, Christopher Hamed, Mahmoud |
| contents | Recent discoveries of dust and molecular gas in quiescent galaxies (QGs) up to $z\sim3$ challenge the long-standing view that the interstellar medium depletes rapidly once star formation ceases, raising key questions of whether dust and gas co-evolve in QGs, and how their depletion links to stellar aging. We present deep Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band~6 continuum and CO(3--2) observations of 17 QGs at $z\sim0.4$ in the COSMOS field. Using the dust-to-molecular gas mass ratio ($δ_{\rm DGR}$) as a key diagnostic, we trace post-quenching evolution of the cold interstellar medium. Our study triples the number of QGs with direct $δ_{\rm DGR}$ estimates, constraining 12 systems with stellar population ages of $\sim$5--10 Gyr. For the first time, we show that $δ_{\rm DGR}$ in QGs ranges from $\sim8\times$ below to $\sim2.5\times$ above the canonical value of $δ_{\rm DGR}\sim1/100$. Despite uniformly low molecular gas fractions (median $f_{\rm H_2}=M_{\rm H_2}/M_{\star}\sim4.1\%$), QGs follow diverse evolutionary paths: about half exhibit rapid ($\sim700$ Myr) exponential dust decline with age, while the rest show mild decline over $\gtrsim$2 Gyr, maintaining elevated $δ_{\rm DGR}\gtrsim1/100$. Our results support simulations predictions of dust and molecular gas evolving independently post-quenching, without a preferred quenching mode. This challenges the use of dust continuum as a $\rm H_2$ tracer, implying that quenching cannot be robustly linked to interstellar medium conditions when relying solely on dust or gas. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_10079 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | ALMA reveals diverse dust-to-gas mass ratios and quenching modes in old quiescent galaxies Lorenzon, Giuliano Donevski, Darko Man, Allison W. S. Romano, Michael Whitaker, Katherine E. Belli, Sirio Liu, Daizhong Lee, Minju M. Narayanan, Desika Long, Arianna Shivaei, Irene Nanni, Ambra Lisiecki, Krzysztof Sawant, Prasad Rodighiero, Giulia Damjanov, Ivana Junais Dave, Romeel Pappalardo, Ciro Lovell, Christopher Hamed, Mahmoud Astrophysics of Galaxies Recent discoveries of dust and molecular gas in quiescent galaxies (QGs) up to $z\sim3$ challenge the long-standing view that the interstellar medium depletes rapidly once star formation ceases, raising key questions of whether dust and gas co-evolve in QGs, and how their depletion links to stellar aging. We present deep Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band~6 continuum and CO(3--2) observations of 17 QGs at $z\sim0.4$ in the COSMOS field. Using the dust-to-molecular gas mass ratio ($δ_{\rm DGR}$) as a key diagnostic, we trace post-quenching evolution of the cold interstellar medium. Our study triples the number of QGs with direct $δ_{\rm DGR}$ estimates, constraining 12 systems with stellar population ages of $\sim$5--10 Gyr. For the first time, we show that $δ_{\rm DGR}$ in QGs ranges from $\sim8\times$ below to $\sim2.5\times$ above the canonical value of $δ_{\rm DGR}\sim1/100$. Despite uniformly low molecular gas fractions (median $f_{\rm H_2}=M_{\rm H_2}/M_{\star}\sim4.1\%$), QGs follow diverse evolutionary paths: about half exhibit rapid ($\sim700$ Myr) exponential dust decline with age, while the rest show mild decline over $\gtrsim$2 Gyr, maintaining elevated $δ_{\rm DGR}\gtrsim1/100$. Our results support simulations predictions of dust and molecular gas evolving independently post-quenching, without a preferred quenching mode. This challenges the use of dust continuum as a $\rm H_2$ tracer, implying that quenching cannot be robustly linked to interstellar medium conditions when relying solely on dust or gas. |
| title | ALMA reveals diverse dust-to-gas mass ratios and quenching modes in old quiescent galaxies |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10079 |