Tracking the impact of environment on the galaxy stellar mass function up to z ~ 1 in the 10 k zCOSMOS sample

By M. Bolzonella, K. Kovač, L. Pozzetti, Elena Zucca, O. Cucciati, S. Lilly, Yingjie Peng, A. Iovino, G. Zamorani, D. Vergani and 56 more. 2009

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We study the impact of the environment on the evolution of galaxies in the zCOSMOS 10 k sample in the redshift range 0.1 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 over an area of ~1.5 deg^2. The considered sample of secure spectroscopic redshifts contains about 8500 galaxies, with their stellar masses estimated by SED fitting of the multiwavelength optical to near-infrared (NIR) photometry. The evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) in high and low density regions provides a tool to study the mass assembly evolution in different environments; moreover, the contributions to the GSMF from different galaxy types, as defined by their SEDs and their morphologies, can be quantified. At redshift z ~ 1, the GSMF is only slightly dependent on environment, but at lower redshifts the shapes of the GSMFs in high- and low-density environments become extremely different, with high density regions exhibiting a marked bimodality, not reproducible by a single Schechter function. As a result of this analysis, we infer that galaxy evolution depends on both the stellar mass and the environment, the latter setting the probability of a galaxy to have a given mass: all the galaxy properties related to the stellar mass show a dependence on environment, reflecting the difference observed in the mass functions. The shapes of the GSMFs of early- and late-type galaxies are almost identical for the extremes of the density contrast we consider, ranging from isolated galaxies to rich group members. The evolution toward z = 0 of the transition mass M_(cross), i.e., the mass at which the early- and late-type GSMFs match each other, is more rapid in high density environments, because of a difference in the evolution of the normalisation of GSMFs compared to the total one in the considered environment. The same result is found by studying the relative contributions of different galaxy types, implying that there is a more rapid evolution in overdense regions, in particular for intermediate stellar masses. The rate of evolution is different for sets of galaxy types divided on the basis of their SEDs or their morphologies, tentatively suggesting that the migration from the blue cloud to the red sequence occurs on a shorter timescale than the transformation from disc-like morphologies to ellipticals. Our analysis suggests that environmental mechanisms of galaxy transformation start to be more effective at z < 1. The comparison of the observed GSMFs to the same quantities derived from a set of mock catalogues based on semi-analytical models shows disagreement, in both low and high density environments: in particular, blue galaxies in sparse environments are overproduced in the semi-analytical models at intermediate and high masses, because of a deficit of star formation suppression, while at z < 0.5 an excess of red galaxies is present in dense environments at intermediate and low masses, because of the overquenching of satellites.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/821efd9273ee575f51661281d755a687b94962fb

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Erratum: Recovering galaxy stellar population properties from broad-band spectral energy distribution fitting (2012, background): “For example it is well known that stellar masses are generally better recovered than ages and SFRs (Papovich et al. 2001; Pozzetti et al. 2007; Bolzonella et al. 2009; Lee et al. 2009; Maraston et al. 2010).”
THE GEMINI CLUSTER ASTROPHYSICS SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY (GCLASS): THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT AND SELF-REGULATION IN GALAXY EVOLUTION AT z ∼ 1 (2011, background): “Indeed, a correlation between galaxy stellar mass and environment is observed by most studies of galaxies in the local (e.g., Kauffmann et al. 2004; Baldry et al. 2006), and high-redshift universe (e.g., Bolzonella et al. 2010).”
THE RADIAL AND AZIMUTHAL PROFILES OF Mg ii ABSORPTION AROUND 0.5 < z < 0.9 zCOSMOS GALAXIES OF DIFFERENT COLORS, MASSES, AND ENVIRONMENTS (2011, background): “We refer the reader to Bolzonella et al. (2010) for a detailed technical description of this mass estimation.”
Quasar feedback revealed by giant molecular outflows (2010, background): “Indeed, massive galaxies not only live in reach enviro - ments (see e.g. Bolzonella et al. 2010, Drory et al. 2010) butare also formed in biased regions of the density field.”
zCOSMOS – 10k-bright spectroscopic sample - The bimodality in the galaxy stellar mass function: exploring its evolution with redshift (2009, methodology): “The relative importance of stellar mass and galaxy environment to the shape and evolution of the GSMF is investigated for the zCOSMOS dataset in a parallel paper (Bolzonella et al. 2009).”
Improved constraints on the expansion rate of the Universe up to z ∼ 1.1 from the spectroscopic evolution of cosmic chronometers (2012, background): “03 dex to convert them to a Chabrier IMF [42, 53].”
Measures of Galaxy Environment I - What is "Environment"? (2011, background): “Indeed, a number of authors report that, for many aspects of the galaxy population, environmental dependence is often weak once stellar mass is fixed (van den Bosch et al. 2008a,b; Scodeggio et al. 2009; Bolzonella et al. 2010; Vulcani et al. 2011).”
EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS AT z = 0.1–3 IN COSMOS (2013, methodology): “Using zCOSMOS data, Cucciati et al. (2010); Bolzonella et al. (2010) also see no reversal.”
Stellar masses of SDSS-III/BOSS galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 and constraints to galaxy formation models (2012, methodology): “The code can be used with various stellar population models (s e Bolzonella et al. 2010; Maraston et al. 2006, 2010).”
The DEEP3 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the impact of environment on the size evolution of massive early-type galaxies at intermediate redshift (2011, background): “…https://academ ic.oup.com /m nras/article-abstract/419/4/3018/2908043 by guest on 15 M arch 2020 et al. 2005; Baldry et al. 2006; Rudnick et al. 2009; Bolzonella et al. 2010; Cooper et al. 2010b), then the typical stellar mass within a broad mass bin may differ significantly from one density…”
Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the XMM-COSMOS survey (2012, methodology): “Bolzonella et al. (2010) performed several tests on simulated catalogs and find a scatter of∼ 0.15 dex due to this effect.”