Properties of galaxy groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – I. The dependence of colour, star formation and morphology on halo mass

By Simone M. Weinmann, F. V. D. Bosch, Xiaohu Yang, H. Mo. 2005

547 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a large galaxy group catalogue constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2, we investigate the correlation between various galaxy properties and halo mass. We split the population of galaxies in early-types, late-types and intermediate-types, based on their colour and specific star formation rate. At fixed luminosity, the late- (early-)type fraction of galaxies increases (decreases) with decreasing halo mass. Most importantly, this mass dependence is smooth and persists over the entire mass range probed, without any break or feature at any mass-scale. We argue that the previous claim of a characteristic feature on galaxy group scales is an artefact of the environment estimators used. At fixed halo mass, the luminosity dependence of the type fractions is surprisingly weak, especially over the range 0.25? L/L*? 2.5: galaxy type depends more strongly on halo mass than on luminosity. In agreement with previous studies, the late- (early-)type fraction increases (decreases) with increasing halocentric radius. However, we find that this radial dependence is present in haloes of all masses probed (down to 10 12 h -1 M ⊙ ), while previous studies did not find any radial dependence in haloes with M? 10 13.5 h -1 M ⊙ . We argue that this discrepancy owes to the fact that we have excluded central galaxies from our analysis. We also find that the properties of satellite galaxies are strongly correlated with those of their central galaxy. In particular, the early-type fraction of satellites is significantly higher in a halo with an early-type central galaxy than in a halo of the same mass but with a late-type central galaxy. This phenomenon, which we call 'galactic conformity', is present in haloes of all masses and for satellites of all luminosities. Finally, the fraction of intermediate-type galaxies is always ∼20 per cent, independent of luminosity, independent of halo mass, independent of halocentric radius, and independent of whether the galaxy is a central galaxy or a satellite galaxy. We discuss the implicat ns of all these findings for galaxy formation and evolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b39c1ff4e6fd898b62c8317e6b0254dd9221bc1

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Citations in the corpus

Properties of galaxy groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – II. Active galactic nucleus feedback and star formation truncation (2006, result): “In fact, it is the main mechanism that causes red-sequence model galaxies to preferentially reside in overdense regions such as groups and clusters of galaxies, in good agreement with observations (e.g. Oemler 1974; Dressler 1980; Balogh et al. 2004b; Hogg et al. 2004; Weinmann et al. 2006).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “This is known to produce far too high a fraction of quiescent satellites (Font et al. 2008, Kimm et al. 2009, Weinmann et al. 2006b).”
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 environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, methodology): “Following Weinmann et al. (2006) and Kimm et al. (2009), we have adopted the following demarcation line between red and blue galaxies: 0.1(g − r) = 0.7− 0.032 (0.1Mr − 5 logh+ 16.5) (1) All galaxies with log(SSFR) < −11 are classified as passive.”
The colours of satellite galaxies in groups and clusters (2008, methodology): “However, the lack of faint central galaxies is a selection effect of the group sample in the SDSS: the source catalogue excludes groups for which no member is brighter than 0.1Mr = −19.5 + 5 log h, where h = 0.73 (Weinmann et al. 2006a).”
Galaxy Zoo: Disentangling the Environmental Dependence of Morphology and Colour ⋆ (2008, background): “…while galaxies with red colours and low star formation rates tend to reside in overdense environments (e.g., Lewis et al. 2002, Gómez et al. 2003, Kauffmann et al. 2004, Zehavi et al. 2005, Weinmann et al. 2006, Sheth et al. 2006, Tinker et al. 2008, Bamford et al. 2008, Skibba & Sheth 2009).”
MERGERS AND BULGE FORMATION IN ΛCDM: WHICH MERGERS MATTER? (2009, background): “…satellite/central galaxy status, or morphology have minor impact (see e.g. Yan et al. 2003; Zentner et al. 2005; Tinker et al. 2005; Cooray 2005; Weinmann et al. 2006a; van den Bosch et al. 2007; Conroy et al. 2007; Zheng et al. 2007), the dependence of these properties on mass and one another…”
Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, background): “Another interesting finding of such studies is a conformity between the morphologies of satellites and central galaxies (Weinmann et al. 2006; Ann et al. 2008).”
The importance of satellite quenching for the build-up of the red sequence of present-day galaxies (2007, background): “However, as shown by Weinmann et al. (2006b) and Baldry et al. (2006), the semi-analytical models still predict a red fraction for satellites that is too much high (see Coil et al. 2008 for a similar discrepancy at z ∼ 1).”
Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “More physically, this environmental dependence has been shown to result from satellite galaxies and the properties of their host dark matter halo (Weinmann et al. 2006; Blanton & Berlind 2007; Wilman et al. 2010; Tinker et al. 2011), where ‘satellite’ galaxies are all those that are not the massive…”
The effects of gas on morphological transformation in mergers: implications for bulge and disc demographics (2009, background): “Despite its simplicity, this effectively guarantees a match to various halo occupation statistics including stellar mass functions and the fraction of active/passive galaxies as a function of mass (Yang et al. 2005; Weinmann et al. 2006a,b; Gerke et al. 2007).”
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.…”
There's no place like home? Statistics of Milky Way-mass dark matter haloes (2009, background): “These results led the authors to conclude that the frequency of mergers may present a substantial challenge to our understanding of disk galaxy stability, as the majority of galaxies in MWmass halos are disk-dominated (Weinmann et al. 2006; van den Bosch et al. 2007; Park et al. 2007)).”
Ongoing assembly of massive galaxies by major merging in large groups and clusters from the SDSS (2007, methodology): “The halo-mass-limited sample of 845 CEN galaxies from sampM are shown as red and blue circles separated by the red/blue sequence boundary from Weinmann et al. (2006), modified toz = 0 and H0 = 70 km s−1 Mpc−1.”
The accretion of galaxies into groups and clusters (2009, background): “Many authors have since shown that this approach produces an unphysically high fraction of red galaxies in groups and clusters (Baldry et al. 2006; Weinmann et al. 2006; Gilbank & Balogh 2008).”
Measures of Galaxy Environment I - What is "Environment"? (2011, methodology): “Analyses using group catalogues are complementary to studies with nearest-neighbour or fixed aperture measures, or with galaxy clustering (e.g. Martı́nez & Muriel 2006; Weinmann et al. 2006; Blanton & Berlind 2007; van den Bosch et al. 2008a; Balogh et al. 2009; Skibba et al. 2011).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, background): “…models do not explicitly model a dependence of halo populations on central galaxy properties; i.e., the tentative observational suggestion that, at fixed halo and galaxy mass, red central galaxies are preferentially surrounded by red (as opposed to blue) satellites (Weinmann et al. 2006).”