The colours of satellite galaxies in groups and clusters

By A. Font, Richard G. Bower, Ian G. McCarthy, A. Benson, Carlos S. Frenk, John C. Helly, C. Lacey, C. Baugh, S. C. Icc, Durham and 1 more. 2008

262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Current models of galaxy formation predict satellite galaxies in groups and clusters that are redder than observed. We investigate the effect on the colours of satellite galaxies produced by the ram-pressure stripping of their hot-gaseous atmospheres as the satellites orbit within their parent halo. We incorporate a model of the stripping process based on detailed hydrodynamic simulations within the Durham semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. The simulations show that the environment in groups and clusters is less aggressive than previously assumed. The main uncertainty in the model is the treatment of gas expelled by supernovae. With reasonable assumptions for the stripping of this material, we find that satellite galaxies are able to retain a significant fraction of their hot gas for several Gyr, thereby replenishing their reservoirs of cold, star-forming gas and remaining blue for a relatively long period of time. A bimodal distribution of galaxy colours, similar to that observed in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, is established and the colours of the satellite galaxies are in good agreement with the data. In addition, our model naturally accounts for the observed dependence of satellite colours on environment, from small groups to high-mass clusters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fa41fb50151e1cd5960f892b987d166d760f83f

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Citations in the corpus

The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, methodology): “As explained in Section 2, a gradual stripping of the hot gas reservoir has been advocated and assumed in many recent studies based on semi-analytic models (see e.g. Font et al. 2008; Weinmann et al. 2010; Guo et al. 2011).”
Galaxies–intergalactic medium interaction calculation – I. Galaxy formation as a function of large-scale environment (2009, methodology): “A further advantage of resimulating regions of the Millennium Simulation is that they complement the existing semi-analytic calculations implemented on it (Bower et al. 2006; Croton et al. 2006; De Lucia et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008).”
Tracking the impact of environment on the galaxy stellar mass function up to z ~ 1 in the 10 k zCOSMOS sample (2009, background): “…a too efficient strangulation produces an instantaneous shut down of the star formation when a galaxy enters in a halo (see Weinmann et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008; Kang & van den Bosch 2008; Kimm et al. 2009; Fontanot et al. 2009, for a description of the issue and some attempts to solve it).”
GALAXY CLUSTERING IN THE COMPLETED SDSS REDSHIFT SURVEY: THE DEPENDENCE ON COLOR AND LUMINOSITY (2010, background): “For all samples, the number of degrees-of-freedom (dof) is 12 (13 measured wp values minus one fitted parameter). tral galaxy (Simha et al. 2009; see also Font et al. 2008; Kang & van den Bosch 2008; Skibba 2009).”
A unified multiwavelength model of galaxy formation (2015, methodology): “This extends previous versions of theGALFORM model (Cole et al. 2000; Baugh et al. 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008; Lagos et al. 2012; Gonzalez-Perez et al. 2014) by including important improvements in the input physics, andby calibrating the model against an unprecedentedly wide range…”
Are Brightest Halo Galaxies Central Galaxies (2010, background): “It has been suggested that this over-quenching problem can be avoided by adopting a longer time-scale for strangulation (e.g., Kang & van den Bosch 2008; Font et al. 2008; Weinmann et al. 2009).”
Galacticus: A Semi-Analytic Model of Galaxy Formation (2010, background): “Missing physics, notably tidal and ram pressure mass loss from satellite galaxies (Benson et al., 2002; Lanzoni et al., 2005; Font et al., 2008; Henriques and Thomas, 2010) and the ability to use information on subhalos from N-body merger trees11, is already being incorporated into the development…”
The correlation of star formation quenching with internal galaxy properties and environment (2008, background): “Recently, several authors (Font et al. 2008; Kang & van den Bosch 2008) have proposed improved recipes for the treatment of cooling on to satellites, which produce better results for the predictions of satellite colours.”
Lightcone mock catalogues from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation – I. Construction and application to the BzK colour selection (2012, background): “Satellite galaxies are stripped of their hot gas, thus quenching any further cooling and inhibiting long-term star-formation (see Font et al. 2008, for an alternative cooling model for satellites).”
Ram-pressure stripping of halo gas in disc galaxies: implications for galactic star formation in different environments (2009, background): “…such as maintenance of spiral arms by halo gas infall (e.g., Sellwood & Carlberg 1984), formation of passive spiral galaxies in groups and clusters (e.g., Bekki et al. 2002), and color evolution of satellite galaxies entering into their host group- and cluster-scale halos (e.g., Font et al. 2008).”
THE VELOCITY FUNCTION IN THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT FROM ΛCDM AND ΛWDM CONSTRAINED SIMULATIONS (2009, background): “The latter estimate is roughly correct because, for optically selected samples, a large fraction of satellite galaxies have red colors (Weinmann et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2007; Font et al. 2008) and have probably already lost most of their gas.”
THE VELOCITY WIDTH FUNCTION OF GALAXIES FROM THE 40% ALFALFA SURVEY: SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE COLD DARK MATTER OVERABUNDANCE PROBLEM (2011, background): “A second issue relates to the fact that satellite galaxies may be underrepresented in the α.40 sample, since they are generally redder (and have presumably lower gas fractions) than central galaxies of the same luminosity (e.g. Font et al. 2008).”
Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses (2014, background): “…orbital velocities are also substantially lower in such systems, it is plausible that stripping effects should be less important there, and indeed Font et al. (2008) already advocated such a reduction with respect to the findings of direct simulations of the stripping process, noting that this…”
Galaxy formation theory (2010, background): “The process of ram pressure stripping has been incorporated into some semi-analytic models of galaxy formation (Lanzoni et al. 2005; Font et al. 2008) where it plays an important role in mediating the transition of cluster galaxies from the blue cloud of star-forming galaxies to the red sequence of…”
Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model (2009, methodology): “Remaining parameter values are chosen such that the model satisfies statistical comparisons with several data sets, for example the galaxy luminosity function (LF) measured in several wavebands (e.g. Baugh et al. 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008).”
Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “…quenches star formation too rapidly; only models that remove/strip gas more gradually produce realistic quiescent fractions (Weinmann et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008; Kang & van den Bosch 2008; Book & Benson 2010), but, in general they have difficulty in correctly reproducing the full SFR…”
MERGERS IN ΛCDM: UNCERTAINTIES IN THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MERGER RATE (2010, methodology): “The revised Font et al. (2008) yields merger rates more similar to the HOD-based models, as expected, since the primary adjustment to the model is intended to bring it into better agreement with the observed HOD statistics used as input in the HODbased models.”