Using large galaxy surveys to distinguish z~0.5 quiescent galaxy models
  One of the most striking properties of galaxies is the bimodality in their
star-formation rates. A major puzzle is why any given galaxy is star-forming or
quiescent, and a wide range of physical mechanisms have been proposed as
solutions. We consider how observations, such as might be available in upcoming
large galaxy surveys, might distinguish different galaxy quenching scenarios.
To do this, we combine an N-body simulation and multiple prescriptions from the
literature to create several quiescent galaxy mock catalogues. Each
prescription uses a different set of galaxy properties (such as history,
environment, centrality) to assign individual simulation galaxies as quiescent.
We find how and how much the resulting quiescent galaxy distributions differ
from each other, both intrinsically and observationally. In addition to tracing
observational consequences of different quenching mechanisms, our results
indicate which sorts of quenching models might be most readily disentangled by
upcoming observations and which combinations of observational quantities might
provide the most discriminatory power.
  Our observational measures are auto, cross, and marked correlation functions,
pro- jected density distributions, and group multiplicity functions, which rely
upon galaxy positions, stellar masses and of course quiescence. Although
degeneracies between models are present for individual observations, using
multiple observations in concert allows us to distinguish between all ten
models we consider. In addition to identifying intrinsic and observational
consequences of quiescence prescriptions and testing these quiescence models
against each other and observations, these methods can also be used to validate
colors (or other history and environment dependent properties) in simulated
mock catalogues.
