Quenching and the UVJ diagram in the SIMBA cosmological simulation

Understand

Over the past decade, rest-frame color-color diagrams have become popular tools for selecting quiescent galaxies at high redshift, breaking the color degeneracy between quiescent and dust-reddened star-forming galaxies.

• In this work, we study one such color-color selection tool -- the rest-frame $U-V$ vs.
• $V-J$ diagram -- by employing mock observations of cosmological galaxy formation simulations.
• In particular, we conduct numerical experiments assessing both trends in galaxy properties in UVJ space and the color-color evolution of massive galaxies as they quench at redshifts $z\sim 1$--$2$.