(Talk) Investigating the star formation quenching across cosmic time - A methodology to select galaxies just after the quenching of star formation

<p>We propose a method aimed at identifing galaxies in the short evolutionary phase in which they quench their star-formation (SF). We rely on high- to low-ionization emission line ratios, which rapidly disappear after the SF halt due to the softening of the UV ionizing radiation. In particular, we focus on [O III] 5007/Halpha and [Ne III] 3869/[O II] 3727, simulating their time evolution by means of the CLOUDY photoionization code. We find that these two emission line ratios are able to trace the quenching on very short time-scales (i.e. 10-80 Myr), depending on if a sharp or a smoother SF quenching is assumed. We adopt the [N II] 6584/[O II] 3727 ratio as metallicity diagnostic to mitigate the metallicity degeneracy which affects our method. Using a Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxy sample, we identify 11 examples of extreme quenching candidates within the [O III] 5007/Halpha vs. [N II] 6584/[O II] 3727 plane, characterized by faint [Ne III] 3869, blue dust-corrected spectra and blue (u-r) colours, as expected if the quenching occurred in the recent past. Our results also suggest that the observed fractions of quenching candidates can be used to constrain the quenching mechanism at work and its time-scales.