Quantifying the Bimodal Color-Magnitude Distribution of Galaxies

By I. Baldry, Karl Glazebrook, J. Brinkmann, Željko Ivezic´, Robert Lupton, Robert Nichol, A. Szalay. 2003

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We analyze the bivariate distribution, in color versus absolute magnitude (u-r vs. Mr), of a low-redshift sample of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2400 deg2, 0.004 < z < 0.08, -23.5 < Mr < -15.5). We trace the bimodality of the distribution from luminous to faint galaxies by fitting double Gaussians to the color functions separated in absolute magnitude bins. Color-magnitude (CM) relations are obtained for red and blue distributions (early- and late-type, predominantly field, galaxies) without using any cut in morphology. Instead, the analysis is based on the assumption of normal Gaussian distributions in color. We find that the CM relations are well fitted by a straight line plus a tanh function. Both relations can be described by a shallow CM trend (slopes of about -0.04, -0.05) plus a steeper transition in the average galaxy properties over about 2 mag. The midpoints of the transitions (Mr = -19.8 and -20.8 for the red and blue distributions, respectively) occur around 2 × 1010 ℳ☉ after converting luminosities to stellar mass. Separate luminosity functions are obtained for the two distributions. The red distribution has a more luminous characteristic magnitude and a shallower faint-end slope (M* = -21.5, α = -0.8) compared to the blue distribution (α ≈ -1.3, depending on the parameterization). These are approximately converted to galaxy stellar mass functions. The red distribution galaxies have a higher number density per magnitude for masses greater than about 3 × 1010 ℳ☉. Using a simple merger model, we show that the differences between the two functions are consistent with the red distribution being formed from major galaxy mergers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af4df63a72fdbd417f16c0011249b3c4f4259c25

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Citations in the corpus

The Bimodal Galaxy Color Distribution: Dependence on Luminosity and Environment (2004, background): “In particular, the color distribution at fixed luminosity is surprisingly well modell d by only two Gaussian distributions (Baldry et al. 2004, hereafter Paper I).”
Dependence of galaxy quenching on halo mass and distance from its centre (2012, background): “Galaxies can be crudely divided into two classes: blue star-forming disc galaxies and red ellipticals dominated by old stars (Strateva et al. 2001; Kauffmann et al. 2003; Blanton et al. 2003; Baldry et al. 2004).”
The Luminosity, Stellar Mass, and Number Density Evolution of Field Galaxies of Known Morphology from z = 0.5 to 3 (2004, background): “…Sloan and others has argued that ∼ 30% of the luminosity in the nearby universe originates from early-type galaxies, with an even higher fraction of contemporary stellar mass in these evolved systems (e.g., Fukugita, Hogan & Peebles 1998; Blanton et al. 2001; Hogg et al. 2002; Baldry et al. 2003).”
Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with spectral energy distribution modelling (2015, background): “…the discovery of the bimodality of galaxies on the colour (proxy to star-formation history) versus stellar-mass plane (e.g. Strateva et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004; Bell et al. 2004; Baldry et al. 2006) has been interpreted as evidence for star-formation quenching that may be driven by either…”
Introducing the Illustris Project: simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe (2014, background): “For M∗ > 109 M , we estimate that about 52 per cent of all stellar mass at z = 0 is in galaxies with a low SFR, while observations (Baldry et al. 2004; Moustakas et al. 2013) report 54–60 per cent.”
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): ugriz galaxy luminosity functions (2011, background): “Although colour bimodality is more pronounced in (u − r) colour, e.g. Strateva et al. (2001), Baldry et al. (2004), u-band photometry, even after forming a ‘pseudo-Petrosian’ magnitude (equation 1) is rather noisy, and so we prefer to base our colour cuts on the more robust (g − r) colour.”
The evolution of the dust temperatures of galaxies in the SFR–M∗ plane up to z ~ 2 (2013, background): “…population of massive (i.e., M∗ > 1010.5 M ) and passive (i.e., SFR < 1 M yr−1) galaxies constituting the “red sequence” of the optical colour-magnitude diagram (e.g., Baldry et al. 2004; Faber et al. 2007), and which exists over the full redshift range covered by our study (Fontana et al. 2009).”
Galaxy Groups in the SDSS DR4. I. The Catalog and Basic Properties (2007, background): “As shown by Baldry et al. (2004) the distribution of (g − r) colors at a given r-band magnitude can be well approximated by a bi-Gaussian function, representing the red sequence and the blue cloud.”
The UV-Optical Galaxy Color-Magnitude Diagram. III. Constraints on Evolution from the Blue to the Red Sequence (2007, positive): “There has been growing interest in the nature of the observed color bimodality in the distribution of galaxies (Balogh et al. 2004; Baldry et al. 2004) that is echoed in other galaxy properties (Kauffmann et al. 2003).”
Galaxies in a simulated ΛCDM universe – II. Observable properties and constraints on feedback (2009, background): “…(NK); rad@astro.as.arizona.edu (RD); fardal@astro.umass.edu (MF); dhw@ astronomy.ohio-state.edu (DHW) massive galaxies are typically red, elliptical and have very little star formation, while lower mass objects are blue, discy, star-forming galaxies (e.g. Kauffmann et al. 2003; Baldry et al. 2004).”
UV CONTINUUM SLOPE AND DUST OBSCURATION FROM z ∼ 6 TO z ∼ 2: THE STAR FORMATION RATE DENSITY AT HIGH REDSHIFT (2009, background): “…correlation between UV -optical colors and rest-frame optical magnitude has been found for star-forming galaxies in the “blue” cloud (e.g., Papovich et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004; Papovich et al. 2004; Wyder et al. 2007; Labbé et al. 2007), in the sense that more luminous galaxies are redder.”
The ATLAS3D project - XIV. The extent and kinematics of the molecular gas in early-type galaxies (2012, background): “…between the properties of ETGs (e.g the fundamental plane, Dressler et al. 1987; Djorgovski & Davis 1987; the colour-magnitude relation, Baldry et al. 2004), it is thought that the cold inter-stellar medium (ISM) must be removed or destroyed (or potentially made stable; e.g. Martig et…”
The physical properties of star-forming galaxies in the low-redshift universe (2003, methodology): “This has recently been described and quantified in a number of papers (e.g. Strateva et al. 2001; Blanton et al. 2003b; Kauffmann et al. 2003b; Baldry et al. 2004).”
The 2df SDSS LRG and QSO survey: evolution of the luminosity function of luminous red galaxies to z= 0.6 (2006, background): “…over a range of redshifts (Bernardi et al. 1998; Kuntschner & Davies 1998; Trager et al. 2000; Hogg et al. 2002; Bernardi et al. 2003a, 2003b,c,d; Baldry et al. 2004; Cimatti et al. 2004; Glazebrook et al. 2004; McCarthy et al. 2004; Papovich et al. 2005; Thomas et al. 2005; Bernardi et al.…”
UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe (2007, background): “Of objects detected in FUV, 98% are also detected in NUV.c Includes 382 objects for which classification was not possible, see §3.2. optical CMDs (Baldry et al. 2004).”
Massive molecular outflows and evidence for AGN feedback from CO observations (2013, background): “…steep decline of the stellar mass function at high masses), to account for the “red-and-dead” properties of massive ellipticals (Cowie et al. 1996; Baldry et al. 2004; Pérez-González et al. 2008) and to drive the correlations between supermassive black holes and Article published by EDP…”
The dark side of galaxy colour (2013, background): “Additionally, there is a clear bimodality in the distribution of galaxy color and brightness, with distinct red and blue sequences in color-magnitude space, along with a minority ’green valley’ population (Blanton et al. 2003; Baldry et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005; Wyder et al. 2007).”
The ATLAS3D project – XX. Mass–size and mass–σ distributions of early-type galaxies: bulge fraction drives kinematics, mass-to-light ratio, molecular gas fraction and stellar initial mass function (2012, background): “…(Faber et al. 1997; Graham & Guzmán 2003; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Lauer et al. 2007b), they deviate from power-law colour–magnitude relations (Baldry et al. 2004; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Bernardi et al. 2011) and are embedded in massive X-ray haloes (Kormendy et al. 2009; Sarzi et al. 2013,…”