We study the evolution of the colour-magnitude relation for galaxies in the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) by introducing the concept of the bright edge, and use this to derive constraints on the quenching of star formation activity in galaxies over the redshift range $0.5 < z < 1.1$. The bright-edge of the colour-magnitude diagram evolves with little dependence on galaxy colour, and therefore on the amount of star formation taking place in bright galaxies. We modelled this evolution with delayed exponential star formation histories (SFHs), to better understand the time-scale of the turn-off in star formation activity. We show that using SFHs without quenching, the transition from the blue cloud to the red sequence is too slow. This indicates that a scenario purely driven by the consumption of the gas inside each galaxy does not reproduce the observed evolution of the colour-magnitude bright edge. Among the quenching scenarios explored, the one that best matches the observations assumes that galaxies stop their star formation at a randomly selected time with a uniform distribution up to $2.5$ Gyr. We argue that quenching is required over a wide range of stellar masses. Qualitatively similar evolution of the bright edge is found in the predictions of a semi-analytical galaxy formation model, but quantitatively there are marked differences with the observations. This illustrates the utility of the bright edge as a test of galaxy formation models. The evolution changes and no longer matches the observed trend if feedback from heating by active galactic nuclei is turned off.

中文翻译：

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从 VIPERS 中颜色-星等关系的演变模拟恒星形成活动的猝灭

我们通过引入亮边的概念来研究 VIMOS 公共河外红移勘测 (VIPERS) 中星系颜色-星等关系的演变，并使用它来推导出红移范围内星系中恒星形成活动淬灭的约束$0.5 < z < 1.1$。颜色-星等图的亮边演化几乎不依赖于星系的颜色，因此依赖于明亮星系中恒星形成的数量。我们使用延迟指数恒星形成历史 (SFH) 对这种演化进行建模，以更好地了解恒星形成活动关闭的时间尺度。我们表明，使用没有淬灭的 SFH，从蓝云到红色序列的过渡太慢了。这表明纯粹由每个星系内的气体消耗驱动的场景并不能再现观察到的颜色-亮度边缘的演化。在探索的猝灭情景中，最符合观测结果的情景假设星系在随机选择的时间停止它们的恒星形成，均匀分布高达 2.5 美元 Gyr。我们认为在广泛的恒星质量范围内都需要淬火。在半解析星系形成模型的预测中发现了质量上相似的亮边演化，但在数量上与观察结果存在显着差异。这说明了亮边作为星系形成模型测试的实用性。如果关闭活动星系核加热的反馈，演化会发生变化并且不再与观察到的趋势相匹配。