A Review of Galaxy Quenching -- Part I: Defining the Problem and Observational Results
Asa F. L. Bluck
astro-ph.GA
Submitted: 2026-08-07
Updated: 2026-08-10
Comments: Invited review article for The Astronomy & Astrophysics Review. Accepted on 15 July 2026. 156 pages; 37 figures. Rights to reproduce non-original figures are given by creative commons license or else direct permission from the publisher, journal, or original author(s) (as required by the individual publishing agreements)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: The goal of this review article series is to provide a comprehensive overview of galactic star formation and quenching from both an observational and theoretical perspective.
Terminology
Abstract
The goal of this review article series is to provide a comprehensive overview of galactic star formation and quenching from both an observational and theoretical perspective. Drawing on a vast quantity of literature, we attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: why do galaxies cease forming stars? In Part I, we concentrate on observational results, especially from the past two decades, where there have been enormous advances made towards answering this fundamental question. In Part II we focus on theory and simulations, including discussion of direct observational tests thereof. Observationally, the advent of wide-field spectroscopic galaxy surveys, spatially resolved spectroscopy, high resolution sub-mm and radio observations, X-ray observations, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and most recently the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have all contributed significantly to our empirical knowledge of star formation and its demise in galaxy quenching. We discuss the fundamental problems which quenching aims to solve, various routes to identifying quiescent galaxies in observations, observational constraints on quenching from studies of galaxy populations, and the spatially resolved view of quenching. We end this part of the review with a detailed discussion of the latest results on galaxy quenching at the high redshift frontier from JWST observations.
Sources
- The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- Evolution of spatially resolved star formation main sequence and surface density profiles in massive disc galaxies at $0\lesssim z \lesssim 1$: inside-out stellar mass buildup and quenching
- The Mass-Independence of Specific Star Formation Rates in Galactic Disks
- Discovery and properties of ultra-high redshift galaxies ($9<z<12$) in the JWST ERO SMACS 0723 Field
- The impact of medium-width bands on the selection, and subsequent luminosity function measurements, of high-z galaxies
- Massive post-starburst galaxies at z > 1 are compact proto-spheroids
- No evidence for excess AGN activity in recently quenched massive galaxies at cosmic noon
- Confirmation and refutation of very luminous galaxies in the early universe
- JWST UNCOVER: Discovery of $z>9$ Galaxy Candidates Behind the Lensing Cluster Abell 2744
- Revealing Galaxy Candidates out to $z \sim 16$ with JWST Observations of the Lensing Cluster SMACS0723
- Sizes and mass profiles of candidate massive galaxies discovered by JWST at 7<z<9: evidence for very early formation of the central ~100 pc of present-day ellipticals
- CEERS Epoch 1 NIRCam Imaging: Reduction Methods and Simulations Enabling Early JWST Science Results
- The ALMaQUEST Survey IX: The nature of the resolved star forming main sequence
- The Molecular-Gas Main Sequence and Schmidt-Kennicutt relation are fundamental, the Star-Forming Main Sequence is a (useful) byproduct
- Zapped then Napped? A rapidly quenched remnant leaker candidate with a steep spectroscopic $\beta_{UV}$ slope at z=8.5
- The abundance and nature of high-redshift quiescent galaxies from JADES spectroscopy and the FLAMINGO simulations
- A core in a star-forming disc as evidence of inside-out growth in the early Universe
- Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
- Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The galaxy stellar mass function at z < 0.06
- Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the G02 field, Herschel-ATLAS target selection and Data Release 3
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