Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies

By A. V. D. Linden, V. Wild, G. Kauffmann, Simon D. M. White, Simone M. Weinmann. 2009

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the recent and current star formation activity of galaxies as function of distance from the cluster center in a sample of 521 SDSS clusters at z< 0.1. We characterize the recent star formation history by the strength of the 4000A break and the strength of the Balmer absorption lines, and thus probe the star formation history over the last∼ 2Gyr. We show that when the Brightest Cluster Galaxies are excluded from the galaxy sample, there is no evidence for mass segregation in the clusters, so that differences in cluster and field populations cannot simply be attributed to different mass functions. We find a marked star formation‐radius relation in that almost all galaxies in the cluster core are q uiescent, i.e. have terminated star formation a few Gyr ago. This star formation‐radius relation is most pronounced for lowmass galaxies and is very weak or absent beyond the virial radius. The typical star formation rate of non-quiescent galaxies declines by approximately a factor of two towards the cluster center. However, the fraction of galaxies with young stellar populations indicating a recently completed starburst or a truncation of star formation does not vary significantly with radius. These results favor a scenario in which star formation is quenched slowly, on timescales similar to the cluster crossing time, i.e. a few Gyr. The fractio n of star-forming galaxies which host a powerful optical AGN is also independent of clustercentric radius, indicating that the link between star formation and AGN in these galaxies operates independent of environment. The fraction of red galaxies which host a weak optical AGN decreases, however, towards the cluster center, with a similar timescale as the decline of st ar forming galaxies. Our results can be fully explained by a gradual decline of star formation rate upon infall into the cluster, and rule out significant contributions from more violent pro cesses at least beyond cluster radii & 0.1R200.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4945c6f036590cfc5df9c812710b6a07a5be0b38

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Conroy
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. R. Somerville
5. R. Dav'e
6. F. V. D. Bosch
7. A. Dekel
8. Andrey V. Kravtsov

In Instrumentation

1. C. Conroy
2. R. Dav'e
3. R. Somerville
4. L. Hernquist
5. P. Hopkins
6. A. Dekel
7. F. V. D. Bosch
8. P. V. van Dokkum

Citations in the corpus

• Weighing the Giants – III. Methods and measurements of accurate galaxy cluster weak-lensing masses (2012, background): “Although the total number of galaxies roughly follows a 1/r2 profile, the fraction of those galaxies that are not on the red sequence declines sharply towards theclust r core (e.g. von der Linden et al. 2010).”
• Why does the environmental influence on group and cluster galaxies extend beyond the virial radius (2012, background): “…evidence that the colour–density relation persists out to distances significantly greater than r200 (e.g., Balogh et al. 1999; Hansen et al. 2009; Haines et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010; Lu et al. 2012; Wetzel, Tinker & Conroy 2012; Rasmussen et al. 2012; see also Bahé et al. 2012).”
• LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “7 10IR 10> × ⊙ increases steadily with cluster-centric radius, but remains well below the field value even at ∼3r200. von der Linden et al. (2010) found that suppression of star formation in cluster galaxies could be traced out to ∼4r200.”
• Dependence of galaxy quenching on halo mass and distance from its centre (2012, background): “The decreased quenching with D also agrees with several other studies of SFR or the blue/red fractions within groups and clusters (Gómez et al. 2003; Balogh et al. 2004; Tanaka et al. 2004; Rines et al. 2005; Haines et al. 2007; Wolf et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010).”
• Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “…et al. 2001; De Propris et al. 2004; Weinmann et al. 2006; Blanton & Berlind 2007; Kimm et al. 2009; van den Bosch et al. 2008; Hansen et al. 2009; Kimm et al. 2009; Pasquali et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010; Prescott et al. 2011; Peng et al. 2012; Wetzel et al. 2012; Woo et al. 2013).”
• GASP. I. Gas Stripping Phenomena in Galaxies with MUSE (2017, result): “…galaxies is especially sensitive to environmental effects, AGN studies as a function of environment are of interest, though they often find contrasting results (Miller et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Martini et al. 2006; Popesso & Biviano 2006; von der Linden et al. 2010; Marziani et al. 2017).”
• Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: star formation rates, red sequence fractions and the persistent bimodality (2011, background): “…(De Propris et al. 2004; Blanton & Berlind 2007; Hansen et al. 2009) and have lower SFRs (Balogh et al. 2000; Ellingson et al. 2001; Weinmann et al. 2006; von der Linden et al. 2010; Prescott et al. 2011) towards group/cluster centre, including weak trends for groups at z ≈ 1 (Gerke et al. 2007).”
• MASS AND ENVIRONMENT AS DRIVERS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION. II. THE QUENCHING OF SATELLITE GALAXIES AS THE ORIGIN OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS (2011, background): “1 & 2 in P10 also show that the mean <log SFR> is independent of environment (also see von der Linden et al. 2010), all suggesting that some significant mass increase (and thus attendant mass-quenching) will have taken place since the galaxies became satellites.”
• THE GEMINI CLUSTER ASTROPHYSICS SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY (GCLASS): THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT AND SELF-REGULATION IN GALAXY EVOLUTION AT z ∼ 1 (2011, background): “…are redder (e.g., Kauffmann et al. 2004; Balogh et al. 2004b; Baldry et al. 2006; van den Bosch et al. 2008; Skibba et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010), less star forming (e.g., Gómez et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Balogh et al. 2004a; Weinmann et al. 2006; von der Linden et…”
• The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, background): “Several other studies have argued for relatively long timescales for the suppression of the star formation rates in satellite galaxies (Finn et al. 2008; Weinmann et al. 2009; De Lucia et al. 2009; Simard et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010; McGee et al. 2011).”