A Wide-Field Hubble Space Telescope Study of the Cluster Cl 0024+16 at z = 0.4. I. Morphological Distributions to 5 Mpc Radius

By T. Treu, Richard S. Ellis, Jean-Paul Kneib, A. Dressler, I. Smail, O. Czoske, A. Oemler, P. Natarajan. 2003

294 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe a new wide-field Hubble Space Telescope survey of the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+16 (z ≈ 0.4) consisting of a sparsely sampled mosaic of 39 Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images that extends to a cluster radius of ~5 Mpc. Together with extensive ground-based spectroscopy taken from the literature, augmented with over a hundred newly determined redshifts, this unique data set enables us to examine environmental influences on the properties of cluster members from the inner core to well beyond the virial radius (~1.7 Mpc). We catalog photometric measures for 22,000 objects to I ≳ 25 and assign morphological types for 2181 to I = 22.5, of which 195 are spectroscopically confirmed cluster members. We examine both the morphology-radius (T-R) and morphology-density (T-Σ) relations and demonstrate sensitivities adequate for measures from the core to a radius of ~5 Mpc, spanning over 3 decades in local projected density. The fraction of early-type galaxies declines steeply from the cluster center to 1 Mpc radius and more gradually thereafter, asymptoting toward the field value at the periphery. We discuss our results in the context of three distinct cluster zones, defined according to different physical processes that may be effective in transforming galaxy morphology in each. By treating infalling galaxies as isolated test particles, we deduce that the most likely processes responsible for the mild gradient in the morphological mix outside the virial radius are harassment and starvation. Although more data are needed to pin down the exact mechanisms, starvation seems more promising in that it would naturally explain the stellar and dynamical homogeneity of cluster E/S0s. However, we find significant scatter in the local density at any given radius outside ~0.5 Mpc and that the same T-Σ relation holds in subregions of the cluster, independent of location. In this hitherto unprobed region, where the potential of the cluster is weak, galaxies apparently retain their identities as members of infalling subgroups whose characteristic morphological properties remain intact. Only upon arrival in the central regions is the substructure erased, as indicated by the tight correlation between cluster radius and Σ.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/05d707715260f8749405c0dd7ead8b5448b2ad4d

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Citations in the corpus

The Origin of Dwarf Ellipticals in the Virgo Cluster (2008, background): “In the starvation scenario (Larson et al. 1980, Balogh et al. 2000, Treu et al. 2003), the cluster acts on large scales by removing any extended gaseous halo surrounding the galaxy, preventing further infall of such gas onto the disk.”
K-Band Properties of Galaxy Clusters and Groups: Luminosity Function, Radial Distribution, and Halo Occupation Number (2004, background): “We first list a few candidate processes that may change the galaxy populations as clusters merge and grow in mass (e.g., Treu et al. 2003): tidal stripping, ‘‘galaxy harassment’’ (cumulative tidal disruption due to impulsive encounters between galaxies or cluster substructures; Moore et al. 1998),…”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “0.5 (e.g. Dressler et al. 1997; Fasano et al. 2000; Treu et al. 2003; Wilman et al. 2009) and later out to z .”
A Wide-Field Survey of Two z ~ 0.5 Galaxy Clusters: Identifying the Physical Processes Responsible for the Observed Transformation of Spirals into S0s (2007, background): “…at Los Angeles, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Los Angeles, CA 90095 5 Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK 6 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow part due to the overlapping regimes of influence for each of the proposed mechanisms (see Treu et al. 2003).”
Environmental Effects on Late‐Type Galaxies in Nearby Clusters (2006, background): “It has been claimed that observing the threshold for star formation activity at ∼1 virial radius (i.e., at clustercentric distances where the IGM gas density is low; Treu et al. 2003) argues against the ram pressure stripping scenario.”
CAIRNS: The Cluster and Infall Region Nearby Survey. I. Redshifts and Mass Profiles (2003, methodology): “Curiously, the star formation-density relation in this cluster is much stronger than the morphology-density relation discussed in Treu et al. (2003), suggesting that star formation is more sensitive than morphology to environment.”
Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, unknown): “With the launch of theHubble Space Telescope, studies of morphology versus environment have focused on measuring the evolution with redshift (Smail et al. 1997; Dressleret al. 1997; Poggianti et al. 1999; Treu et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2005; Postman et al. 2005).”
Pre-Processing of Galaxies before Entering a Cluster (2003, background): “Recent observations show that galaxies have already been affected by some environmental effects in subclusters (Kodama et al. 2001; Treu et al. 2003; Goto et al. 2003b).”
The Morphology-Density Relation in z ~ 1 Clusters (2005, background): “The scale of 0.6r200 for the onset of the transition between the low-density field population and that in high-density regions is in agreement with previous low-redshift observations (e.g., Kodama et al. 2001; Treu et al. 2003; Goto et al. 2003b).”
The evolution of substructure - III. The outskirts of clusters (2004, unknown): “For example, if we used the prescriptions outlined in Treu et al. (2003), these galaxies would also have undergone starvation, ram pressure stripping, tidally triggered star formation and significant tidal stripping, thus confusing any correlation of the galaxy’s morphology with local environment.”
The zCOSMOS redshift survey: the role of environment and stellar mass in shaping the rise of the morphology-density relation from z ~ 1 (2009, methodology): “On the specific case of Cl0024+16 at z = 0.4, Treu et al. (2003) examined the environmental influences on the properties of cluster members from the inner core to well beyond the virial radius and found that the fraction of early-type galaxies declines steeply from the cluster centre to 1 Mpc…”
Evolution since z = 1 of the Morphology-Density Relation for Galaxies (2004, methodology): “However, the physical processes that govern how star–forming disk galaxies are transformed into quiescent lenticulars remains an important outstanding question (e.g. Kodama & Smail 2001; Treu et al. 2003).”
The Assembly History of Field Spheroidals: Evolution of Mass-to-Light Ratios and Signatures of Recent Star Formation (2005, unknown): “ASSEMBLY HISTORY OF FIELD SPHEROIDALS 175 introduced by Abraham et al. (1996; see also Treu et al. 2003): T ¼ 2 ¼ star, 1 ¼ compact, 0 ¼ E, 1 ¼ E/S0, 2 ¼ S0, 3 ¼ Sa+b, 4 ¼ S, 5 ¼ Sc+d, 6 ¼ Irr, 7 ¼ Unclass, 8 ¼ Merger, 9 ¼ Fault.”
THE GRISM LENS-AMPLIFIED SURVEY FROM SPACE (GLASS). I. SURVEY OVERVIEW AND FIRST DATA RELEASE (2015, background): “Parallel ACS G800L Grism spectroscopy in two offset fields (at 2–3Mpc, i.e., 1–3 virial radii; 2 position angles; see Figure 2) for each cluster, will cover the cluster infall regions, a key region for some environmental processes (e.g., Treu et al. 2003).”
The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation (2005, background): “For example, the morphology–density relation is found to evolve (Dressler et al. 1997; Fasano et al. 2000; Treu et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2005, but see also Andreon 1998).”