The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) began observations in 2014 July. It pursues three core programs: the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2), Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA), and the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS). As well as its core program, eBOSS contains two major subprograms: the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS) and the SPectroscopic IDentification of ERosita Sources (SPIDERS). This paper describes the first data release from SDSS-IV, Data Release 13 (DR13). DR13 makes publicly available the first 1390 spatially resolved integral field unit observations of nearby galaxies from MaNGA. It includes new observations from eBOSS, completing the Sloan Extended QUasar, Emission-line galaxy, Luminous red galaxy Survey (SEQUELS), which also targeted variability-selected objects and X-ray-selected objects. DR13 includes new reductions of the SDSS-III BOSS data, improving the spectrophotometric calibration and redshift classification, and new reductions of the SDSS-III APOGEE-1 data, improving stellar parameters for dwarf stars and cooler stars. DR13 provides more robust and precise photometric calibrations. Value-added target catalogs relevant for eBOSS, TDSS, and SPIDERS and an updated red-clump catalog for APOGEE are also available. This paper describes the location and format of the data and provides references to important technical papers. The SDSS web site, http://www.sdss.org, provides links to the data, tutorials, examples of data access, and extensive documentation of the reduction and analysis procedures. DR13 is the first of a scheduled set that will contain new data and analyses from the planned ∼6 yr operations of SDSS-IV.

We examine the quenched fraction of central and satellite galaxies as a function of galaxy stellar mass, halo mass, and the matter density of their large-scale environment. Matter densities are inferred from our ELUCID simulation, a constrained simulation of the local universe sampled by SDSS, while halo masses and central/satellite classification are taken from the galaxy group catalog of Yang et al. The quenched fraction for the total population increases systematically with the three quantities. We find that the “environmental quenching efficiency,” which quantifies the quenched fraction as a function of halo mass, is independent of stellar mass. And this independence is the origin of the stellar mass independence of density-based quenching efficiency found in previous studies. Considering centrals and satellites separately, we find that the two populations follow similar correlations of quenching efficiency with halo mass and stellar mass, suggesting that they have experienced similar quenching processes in their host halo. We demonstrate that satellite quenching alone cannot account for the environmental quenching efficiency of the total galaxy population, and that the difference between the two populations found previously arises mainly from the fact that centrals and satellites of the same stellar mass reside, on average, in halos of different mass. After removing these effects of halo mass and stellar mass, there remains a weak, but significant, residual dependence on environmental density, which is eliminated when halo assembly bias is taken into account. Our results therefore indicate that halo mass is the prime environmental parameter that regulates the quenching of both centrals and satellites.

We investigate the recent star formation history (SFH) in the inner region of 57 nearly face-on spiral galaxies selected from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. For each galaxy, we use the integral field spectroscopy from CALIFA to obtain two-dimensional maps and radial profiles of three parameters that are sensitive indicators of the recent SFH: the 4000 Å break (D _n (4000)), and the equivalent width of Hδ absorption ( ) and Hα emission (EW(Hα)). We have also performed photometric decomposition of bulge/bar/disk components based on SDSS optical image. We identify a class of 17 “turnover” galaxies for which the central region presents a significant drop in D _n (4000), and most of them correspondingly show a central upturn in and EW(Hα). This indicates that the central region of the turnover galaxies has experienced star formation in the past 1–2 Gyr, which makes the bulge younger and more star-forming than surrounding regions. We find that almost all (15/17) of the turnover galaxies are barred, while only half of the barred galaxies in our sample (15/32) are classified as a turnover galaxies. This finding provides strong evidence in support of the theoretical expectation that the bar may drive gas from the disk inward to trigger star formation in the galaxy center, an important channel for the growth/rejuvenation of pseudobulges in disk galaxies.

We investigate radial gradients in the recent star formation history (SFH) of 1917 galaxies with 0.01 < z < 0.14 from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory project. For each galaxy, we obtain two-dimensional maps and radial profiles for three spectroscopically measured parameters that are sensitive to the recent SFH: D _n (4000) (the 4000 Å break), EW(Hδ _A ), and EW(Hα) (the equivalent width of the Hδ absorption and the Hα emission line). The majority of the spaxels are consistent with models of a continuously declining star formation rate, indicating that starbursts occur rarely in local galaxies with regular morphologies. We classify the galaxies into three classes: fully star-forming (SF), partly quenched (PQ), and totally quenched (TQ). The galaxies that are less massive than 10¹⁰ M _⊙ present at most weak radial gradients in the diagnostic parameters. In contrast, massive galaxies with a stellar mass above 10¹⁰ M _⊙ present significant gradients in the three diagnostic parameters if they are classified as SF or PQ but show weak gradients in D _n (4000) and EW(Hδ _A ) and no gradients in EW(Hα) if they are in the TQ class. This implies the existence of a critical stellar mass (∼10¹⁰ M _⊙) above which the star formation in a galaxy is shut down from the inside out. Galaxies tend to evolve synchronously from the inner to the outer regions before their mass reaches the critical value. We have further divided the sample at a fixed mass by both bulge-to-total luminosity ratio and morphological type, finding that our conclusions hold regardless of these factors; it appears that the presence of a central dense object is not a driving parameter but rather a by-product of the star formation cessation process.

We investigate the quenching properties of central and satellite galaxies, utilizing the halo masses and central–satellite identifications from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxy group catalog of Yang et al. We find that the quenched fractions of centrals and satellites of similar stellar masses have similar dependence on host halo mass. The similarity of the two populations is also found in terms of specific star formation rate and 4000 Å break. The quenched fractions of centrals and satellites of similar masses show similar dependencies on bulge-to-total light ratio, central velocity dispersion, and halo-centric distance in halos of given halo masses. The prevalence of optical/radio-loud active galactic nuclei is found to be similar for centrals and satellites at given stellar masses. All these findings strongly suggest that centrals and satellites of similar masses experience similar quenching processes in their host halos. We discuss implications of our results for the understanding of galaxy quenching.

Previous findings show that the existence of dense cores or bulges is the prerequisite for quenching a galaxy, leading to a proposed two-step quenching scenario: compaction and quenching. In this scenario, galaxies first grow their cores to a stellar mass surface density threshold, and subsequently quenching occurs, suggesting that galaxies evolve from extended star-forming galaxies (eSFGs), through compact star-forming galaxies (cSFGs), to a quenched population. In this work, we aim at examining the possible evolutionary link between eSFGs and cSFGs by identifying the trends in star formation rate (SFR), gas-phase metallicity, and H I content, since one would naturally expect that galaxies evolve along the track of cold gas consumption and metal enhancement. We select a volume-limited sample of 15,933 galaxies with stellar mass above and redshift of from the NASA Sloan Atlas catalog within the ALFALFA footprint. The cSFGs on average exhibit similar or slightly higher SFRs of ∼0.06 dex and significantly higher gas-phase metallicity (up to 0.2 dex at low mass) with respect to the eSFGs, while the cSFGs dominate the galaxy population of the most intense star formation activities. More importantly, overall the median H i content and gas depletion time of cSFGs are about half of eSFGs. Our result supports the compaction and quenching scenario that galaxies evolve and grow their cores along the track of cold gas consumption and metal enhancement. The environments of eSFGs and cSFGs are indistinguishable, suggesting that the compaction process is independent of any environmental effects at least for the low-redshift universe.