Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – VI. The orbital extent of enhanced star formation in interacting galaxies

By David R. Patton, P. Torrey, Sara L. Ellison, J. Trevor Mendel, J. Scudder. 2013

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We use pair and environmental classifications of ~ 211,000 star-forming galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, along with a suite of merger simulations, to investigate the enhancement of star formation as a function of separation in galaxy pairs. Using a new technique for distinguishing between the influence of nearby neighbours and larger scale environment, we find a clear enhancement in star formation out to projected separations of ~ 150 kpc, beyond which there is no net enhancement. We find the strongest enhancements at the smallest separations (especially 30 kpc. We conclude that significant interaction-induced star formation is not restricted to merger remnants or galaxies with close companions; instead, a larger population of wider separation pairs exhibit enhanced star formation due to recent close encounters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b6c26565165712071f1c53813f9801d188e78f7

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Citations in the corpus

Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – VIII. The observational properties of post-merger galaxies (2013, methodology): “With the recent extension of merger samples out to projected separations of 1 Mpc, and with the interpretive framework provided by modern simulations, we are now converging on a fairly complete view of galaxy-galaxy interactions.”
The star formation main sequence and stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation (2014, background): “Furthermore, the resulting SFR elevations are sufficient to match the observed interaction induced SFRs of close-pair galaxies in SDSS (Scudder et al. 2012; Patton et al. 2013).”
Galaxy and mass assembly (GAMA): End of survey report and data release 2 (2015, background): “…De Lucia et al. 2006), morphological transformations (e.g. Toomre 1977; Cox et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2009), triggering (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2013a; Patton et al. 2013) and truncating (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2008) star formation, fuelling central supermassive black holes (e.g. Di Matteo, Springel &…”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, background): “Briefly, some areas of the SDSS were observed multiple times, with the result that for every observed pair within the fiber collision radius (55"), 2.08 galaxies have an unobserved pair (Patton et al. 2013).”
Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, background): “Widely separated (noninteracting) pairs will merely trace local environment (e.g. Patton et al. 2013) so one might expect that since being in a pair is more probable at higher local densities (up to a point), residing in a pair might lead to lower star formation rates due to environmental effects.”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – IX. Merger-induced AGN activity as traced by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (2014, background): “…Geller 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2007, 2008; Ellison et al. 2008; Cox et al. 2008; Smith & Struck 2010; Patton et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2012; Scudder et al. 2012; Patton et al. 2013), and the formation of spheroids (e.g., Toomre 1977; Lake & Dressler 1986; Shier & Fischer 1998; Rothberg & Joseph 2006).”