Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: star formation rates, red sequence fractions and the persistent bimodality

By Andrew Wetzel, J. Tinker, C. Conroy. 2011

370 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using galaxy group/cluster catalogues created from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, we examine in detail the specific star formation rate (SSFR) distribution of satellite galaxies and its dependence on stellar mass, host halo mass and halo-centric radius. All galaxies, regardless of central satellite designation, exhibit a similar bimodal SSFR distribution, with a strong break at SSFR ≈ 10−11 yr−1 and the same high SSFR peak; in no regime is there ever an excess of galaxies in the ‘green valley’. Satellite galaxies are simply more likely to lie on the quenched (‘red sequence’) side of the SSFR distribution. Furthermore, the satellite quenched fraction excess above the field galaxy value is nearly independent of galaxy stellar mass. An enhanced quenched fraction for satellites persists in groups with halo masses down to 3 × 1011 M⊙ and increases strongly with halo mass and towards halo centre. We find no detectable quenching enhancement for galaxies beyond ∼2 Rvir around massive clusters once these galaxies have been decomposed into centrals and satellites. These trends imply that (1) galaxies experience no significant environmental effects until they cross within ∼Rvir of a more massive host halo; (2) after this, star formation in active satellites continues to evolve in the same manner as active central galaxies for several Gyr; and (3) once begun, satellite star formation quenching occurs rapidly. These results place strong constraints on satellite-specific quenching mechanisms, as we will discuss further in companion papers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e655d0f529bf23b109fc886dd86d003d62482fc

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

THE SPLASHBACK RADIUS AS A PHYSICAL HALO BOUNDARY AND THE GROWTH OF HALO MASS (2015, background): “…splashback radius, it is unnecessary to invoke special ejection processes to explain the presence of subhalos that have orbited their host at large radii and are deficient in gas or show suppressed star formation (e.g., Balogh et al. 2000; Solanes et al. 2002; Geha et al. 2012; Wetzel et al. 2012).”
Dependence of galaxy quenching on halo mass and distance from its centre (2012, background): “As discussed in §5.3, our results are consistent with those of previous work (eg., Weinmann et al. 2006a; Blanton & Roweis 2007; Hansen et al. 2009; Kimm et al. 2009; Wetzel et al. 2012a).”
THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, methodology): “The next reason for deviations is sustained deficits in the star formation rate for satellite galaxies compared to field galaxies (e.g. Wetzel et al. 2012).”
LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “Wetzel et al. (2012) found their fSF(r) suppressed with respect to field values as far out as 10r200 around cluster-mass halos (M200 > 10 14Me), but interestingly saw this suppression entirely limited to satellite galaxies, with no evidence of suppression among centrals found beyond 1–2r200.”
PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1 (2013, background): “…environment, AGN content, and dark-matter halo mass are critical for determining galaxy quenching, and the evolution of galaxy bimodality (e.g., Weinmann et al. 2006; Bell et al. 2007; Kimm et al. 2009; Peng et al. 2010; Wetzel et al. 2012; Woo et al. 2012; Aird et al. 2012; Knobel et al. 2012).”
Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses (2014, methodology): “…II, our new assumptions not only reproduce the observed abundances of galaxies as a function of stellar mass, star-formation rate and redshift, but also the environmental dependences and quenching time-scales inferred from observations (Peng et al. 2010, 2012; Wetzel et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2014).”
GALAXY CLUSTER BARYON FRACTIONS REVISITED (2013, background): “Finn et al. (2008) and Balogh & McGee (2010) find that the fraction of star-forming galaxies is nearly independent of mass from group to cluster scales, while Weinmann et al. (2006) and Wetzel et al. (2012) conclude that the passive fraction does increase with mass.”
The star formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics (2018, background): “…et al. 2014; Jian et al. 2018), albeit with somewhat different choices for the threshold value, since it roughly corresponds to the minimum of the bimodal distribution of galaxies’ sSFRs (see Kauffmann et al. 2004; Wetzel et al. 2012, and Section 4.1 of this work for a more detailed discussion).”
DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, background): “…invoked to explain star formation quenching in massive galaxies (e.g., Croton et al. 2006; Kimm et al. 2009), the quenched fraction of central galaxies decreases with stellar mass (Wetzel et al. 2012) and may become zero below a stellar mass near 109 M (Kauffmann et al. 2003a; Geha et al. 2012).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “It is known that the massive early-type galaxies in the local universe formed most of their stars at least 8-10 Gyr ago, around z ∼ 2–4 (Thomas et al. 2005, Trager et al. 2000).”
The dark side of galaxy colour (2013, background): “As discussed at length in Wetzel et al. (2011), the robust bimodality of the specific star formation rate (SSFR) dis- 4 Specifically the luminosity function ΦSDSS(L) and the distribution of colors PSDSS(g − r|L). c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 tribution at low-redshift constitutes compelling…”
Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters (2016, background): “Following this, van den Bosch et al. (2008) and Wetzel et al. (2012) argue that the environmental relationships and build-up of the red sequence are primarily driven by the quenching of satellites rather than their central and it is likely that the transformations are caused by removal or…”
Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, methodology): “In Wetzel et al. (2012), hereafter Paper II, we used our SDSS group catalog to examine in detail the SFR distribution of satellite galaxies and its dependence on stellar mass, host halo mass, and halo-centric radius, finding that the SFR distribution is strongly bimodal in all regimes.”
Galaxy assembly bias: a significant source of systematic error in the galaxy–halo relationship (2013, methodology): “Although dust obscuration complicates the use of F satq to quantify star formation activity (see, e.g., Wetzel et al. 2012), this statistic is used widely throughout the literature for this purpose (van den Bosch et al. 2008; Kovac et al. 2013; Tinker et al. 2013).”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, background): “Observational Constraints on Average SSFRs Publication Redshifts Type Area (deg2) Notes Salim et al. (2007) 0-0.2 UV 741 Bauer et al. (2013) 0-0.35 Hα 144 N Whitaker et al. (2014) 0-2.5 UV/IR 0.25 N Zwart et al. (2014) 0-3 Radio 1 IN Karim et al. (2011) 0.2-3 Radio 2 Kajisawa et al. (2010) 0.5-3.5 U”