What Suppresses Star Formation in Bulge-dominated Early-type Galaxies?

We investigate the physical origin of star formation suppression in gas-rich early-type galaxies (ETGs) using five high-resolution hydrodynamical idealized galaxy simulations, performed with the moving-mesh code AREPO . These simulations include one Milky Way–like galaxy and four ETGs, of which one ETG is found to have significantly less star formation despite a substantial molecular gas reservoir. We apply a modified virial theorem to the overdensities in each galaxy to quantify the forces regulating their stability and thus star formation. We find evidence that, in the suppressed galaxy, strong Coriolis forces driven by elevated galactic shear may inhibit gravitational collapse. This is caused by the galaxy’s high central compactness, providing a physical mechanism for the suppression of star formation that does not require the removal of molecular gas. In contrast, less-compact ETGs host more gravity-dominated clouds and therefore exhibit higher star formation rates. However, this gravitational stability occurs without significantly increasing the classical Toomre- Q parameter or velocity dispersion, and therefore, new criteria or tracers for suppressed star formation may be needed. We also discuss the impact of our choice of overdensity scale and connections to observations of molecular clouds.