The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The environmental dependence of galaxy star formation rates near clusters

By Ian Lewis, M. Balogh, R. Propris, W. Couch, Richard G. Bower, A. Offer, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, I. Baldry, C. Baugh, T. Bridges and 23 more. 2002

588 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have measured the equivalent width of the Hα emission line for 11 006 galaxies brighter than M_b-=-−19 (Ω_Λ = 0.7, Ω_m = 0.3, H_0 = 70 km s^(−1) Mpc^(−1)) at 0.05 < z < 0.1 in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS), in the fields of 17 known galaxy clusters. The limited redshift range ensures that our results are insensitive to aperture bias, and to residuals from night sky emission lines. We use these measurements to trace μ*, the star formation rate normalized to L*, as a function of distance from the cluster centre, and local projected galaxy density. We find that the distribution of μ* steadily skews toward larger values with increasing distance from the cluster centre, converging to the field distribution at distances greater than ∼3 times the virial radius. A correlation between star formation rate and local projected density is also found, which is independent of cluster velocity dispersion and disappears at projected densities below ∼1 galaxy Mpc^(−2) (brighter than M_b = −19). This characteristic scale corresponds approximately to the mean density at the cluster virial radius. The same correlation holds for galaxies more than two virial radii from the cluster centre. We conclude that environmental influences on galaxy properties are not restricted to cluster cores, but are effective in all groups where the density exceeds this critical value. The present-day abundance of such systems, and the strong evolution of this abundance, makes it likely that hierarchical growth of structure plays a significant role in decreasing the global average star formation rate. Finally, the low star formation rates well beyond the virialized cluster rule out severe physical processes, such as ram pressure stripping of disc gas, as being completely responsible for the variations in galaxy properties with environment.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/651a8228e4be5d468b94a74a890192a504586dbc

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 Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

The STAGES view of red spirals and dusty red galaxies: Mass-dependent quenching of star formation in cluster infall (2008, background): “…et al. 2005), while the SF–density relation appears to invert its slope between high redshift where SF first commences at highest densities (see Elbaz et al. 2007; Cooper et al. 2008, for results at z ∼ 1) and low redshift (Lewis et al. 2002; Gomez et al. 2003) where it avoids overdense regions.”
The luminosity–metallicity relation in the local Universe from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2004, methodology): “We first exclude all galaxies observed before 31th August 1999, which exhibit problems due to a fault of the atmospheric dispersion compensator within the 2dF instrument (see Lewis et al. 2002 for more detailed c 2004 RAS, MNRAS000, 1–11 6717+6731/H diagram.”
On the prevalence of radio‐loud active galactic nuclei in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows (2006, background): “This result is undoubtedly related to the decreased levels of star formation activity in cluster environments (e.g. Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al. 2003; Mateus & Sodré 2004, and references therein).”
Science with ASKAP (2008, background): “For example, the star formation rate of galaxies begins to drop at the typical group densities [113, 171].”
The Halo Occupation Distribution and the Physics of Galaxy Formation (2002, background): “Recent studies provide observational support for this effect, showing decreased star formation rates in galaxies that are well outside the virial radii of rich clusters (e.g., Lewis et al. 2002; Gomez et al. 2003).”
The HIPASS catalogue: ΩH i and environmental effects on the H i mass function of galaxies (2005, background): “Interestingly, recent 2dF and SDSS results show an anticorrelation between star formation rates based on the equivalent width of the Hα emission line and galaxy density (Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al. 2003; Balogh et al. 2004), out to large distances from cluster cores.”
The Luminosity and Color Dependence of the Galaxy Correlation Function (2004, background): “Examining traditional large-scale structure statistics for different classes of galaxies complements studies of the correlation between galaxy properties and the local environment (Dressler 1980; Postman & Geller 1984; Einasto & Einasto 1987; Whitmore et al. 1993; Lewis et al. 2002).”
What Aspects of Galaxy Environment Matter? (2006, background): “Thus, both group luminosity and radius from the center of the group are closely (and independently) related to galaxy colors, similar to previous findings (Dressler 1980; Whitmore et al. 1993; Lewis et al. 2002; Gomez et al. 2003; Weinmann et al. 2005; Quintero et al. 2006).”
LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “A steady systematic increase in fSF with cluster-centric radius was observed out to ∼r200, similar to those found previously (Ellingson et al. 2001; Lewis et al. 2002; Weinmann et al. 2006).”
On the evolution and environmental dependence of the star formation rate versus stellar mass relation since z ∼ 2 (2013, background): “Goto et al. 2003), and there is a clear trend that the star formation activity of galaxies tends to be lower in high-density environment than low-density fields (e.g. Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al.2003; Tanaka et al. 2004; Balogh et al. 2004).”
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the relationship between galaxy properties and environment at z∼ 1 (2006, background): “…star formation rate and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity] correlate with the local density of the galaxy environment and that the observed correlations extend from the centres of clusters out into the field galaxy population (Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al. C© 2006 The Authors.”
The Environment of Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2003, background): “Physical Interpretation In Figure 8, we confirm the findings of Gomez et al. (2003) and Lewis et al. (2002) that the SFR–density relation has a “critical density” at ≃ 1h−2Mpc2, i.e. below this density the fraction of galaxies that are star–forming is high and constant (see Postman & Geller 1984),…”
The reversal of the star formation-density relation in the distant universe (2007, methodology): “This local relation that we derived from the SDSS is consistent with the one observed in the 2 degree Field (2dF) survey (again with MB ≤-20; see Lewis et al. 2002).”
The Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties in the Local Universe: Dependences on Luminosity, Local Density, and System Richness (2004, methodology): “…the basis of data from the SDSS. Galaxies are restricted to the redshift range of 0.030 < z < 0.065 and the magnitude range of Mr < M ∗ r + 2 (= −19.4), which is deeper by 1 mag than previous volume-limited studies (Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al. 2003; Goto et al. 2003b; Balogh et al. 2004).”
The evolution of substructure - III. The outskirts of clusters (2004, unknown): “We concentrate on the outskirts of these clusters, i.e. distances in the range [Rvir, 2.5Rvir ], which (observationally) have only recently been probed through wide-field optical imaging and spectroscopy (Miyazaki et al. 2002; Lewis et al. 2002).”
Environmental Dependence of Properties of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2006, background): “As originally noted by Postman & Geller (1984) and by a number of more recent investigators (Lewis et al. 2002; Goto et al. 2003; Balogh et al. 2004b;Weinmann et al. 2006; Quintero et al. 2007), this segregation is not limited to rich clusters, but occurs in poorer groups as well.”
The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Instrument specification and target selection (2014, background): “In denser environments processes such as ram-pressure stripping or strangulation can truncate star formation in the outer regions of a galaxy, or across the disk respectively (e.g. Bekki 2009; Lewis et al. 2002) or induce star formation (e.g. Bekki 2014).”
Improved WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey Distance Measurements to z = 1 with Reconstruction of the Baryonic Acoustic Feature (2014, unknown): “We use the COSMOMC package (October 2013 version; Lewis et al. 2002) to calculate the posteriors.”
Near-Infrared Properties of Galaxy Clusters: Luminosity as a Binding Mass Predictor and the State of Cluster Baryons (2003, background): “It is well known that galaxy morphological mix and star formation rates are very different between the fields and the clusters (e.g. Dressler 1984; Lewis et al. 2002); our measurements thus provide an interesting indication of possible differences in the star formation histories and star formation…”