Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment

By I. Baldry, M. Balogh, Richard G. Bower, Karl Glazebrook, Robert Nichol, Steven Bamford, Tamás Budavári. 2006

665 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyse a z < 0.1 galaxy sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey focusing on the variation in the galaxy colour bimodality with stellar mass M and projected neighbour density Σ, and on measurements of the galaxy stellar mass functions. The characteristic mass increases with environmental density from about 10 10. 6 to 10 10.9 M ⊙ (Kroupa initial mass function, H 0 = 70) for Σ in the range 0.1-10 Mpc -2 . The galaxy population naturally divides into a red and blue sequence with the locus of the sequences in colour-mass and colour-concentration indices not varying strongly with environment. The fraction of galaxies on the red sequence is determined in bins of 0.2 in log Σ and log M (12 x 13 bins). The red fraction f r generally increases continuously in both Σ and M such that there is a unified relation: f, = F(Σ, M). Two simple functions are proposed which provide good fits to the data. These data are compared with analogous quantities in semi-analytical models based on the Millennium N-body simulation: the Bower et al. and Croton et al. models that incorporate active galactic nucleus feedback. Both models predict a strong dependence of the red fraction on stellar mass and environment that is qualitatively similar to the observations. However, a quantitative comparison shows that the Bower et al. model is a significantly better match; this appears to be due to the different treatment of feedback in central galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d2520ec368768b3d0a7bb10c769f65a9c432768e

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Citations in the corpus

EVOLUTION OF THE COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATION IN GALAXY CLUSTERS AT z ∼ 1 FROM THE ACS INTERMEDIATE REDSHIFT CLUSTER SURVEY (2008, background): “The mean position of the red sequence does not change significantly with environment in their local sample (Balogh et al. 2004; Baldry et al. 2006).”
THE ASSEMBLY OF MILKY-WAY-LIKE GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2.5 (2013, background): “We have also ignored the spread in galaxy properties at fixed mass (see, e.g., Baldry et al. 2006; Franx et al. 2008, and Fig.”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – II. The effect of environment on interactions (2010, methodology): “(1) i.e. a projected galaxy density averaged from the distancesto the 4th and 5th nearest neighbours within 1000 km s−1 (Baldry et al. 2006).”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy colour bimodality (2017, methodology): “Studying environment, Kauffmann et al. (2004) and Baldry et al. (2006) used SDSS to demonstrate that while the location of the two populations in the D4000/color-mass plane does not correlate with (projected neighbor density) environment, the relative fraction in each population does.”
Environmental effects on satellite galaxies: the link between concentration, size and colour profile (2008, result): “This has been shown to produce results in disagreement with data (Weinmann et al. 2006b; Baldry et al. 2006), indicating that starvation is less efficient than assumed.”
Kinematic properties of early-type galaxy haloes using planetary nebulae (2008, neutral): “…of large photometric surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has consolidated findings of a bimodal colour distribution in local galaxies (e.g. Baldry et al. 2006), differentiating between a blue cloud of mostly star-forming spiral galaxies and a red sequence of mostly non-star-forming…”
Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, methodology): “8 and subsequent figures, for which red galaxies are defined as those on the red side of theu − r versus stellar mass bimodality using the divider determined by Baldry et al. (2006).”
A CATALOG OF DETAILED VISUAL MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATIONS FOR 14,034 GALAXIES IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (2010, background): “Column 46 : The average environmental density from Baldry et al. (2006) .”
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).”
A STELLAR MASS THRESHOLD FOR QUENCHING OF FIELD GALAXIES (2012, background): “A well-established color bimodality is seen in the local distribution of luminous galaxies (e.g., Baldry et al. 2006; Tanaka et al. 2005; Blanton et al. 2005a; Blanton & Moustakas 2009) and appears already in place at redshifts above z ∼ 1 (Bell et al. 2004; Cooper et al. 2007).”
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): survey diagnostics and core data release (2010, background): “…(e.g. Belokurov et al. 2006), new populations of dwarf galaxies (e.g. Willman et al. 2005), galaxy population statistics (e.g. Bell et al. 2003; Baldry et al. 2006), the recent cosmic star formation history (e.g. Heavens et al. 2004), group catalogues (e.g. Eke et al. 2004), merger rates (e.g.…”
Introducing the Illustris Project: simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe (2014, background): “…evolution of galaxies is a strong function of environment, both observationally (e.g. Hogg et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005a; Baldry et al. 2006; Peng et al. 2010) and theoretically (e.g. Crain et al. 2009), based on various measures used to quantify galaxy environments (see…”
MASS AND ENVIRONMENT AS DRIVERS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION IN SDSS AND zCOSMOS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SCHECHTER FUNCTION (2010, methodology): “By inserting the two fitted relations (5) into (6), we recover (7) which was previously proposed by Baldry et al. (2006) as one of two empirical fitting functions for the fred(ρ, m) surface in SDSS.”
The correlation of star formation quenching with internal galaxy properties and environment (2008, methodology): “Although this model accurately fits the global statistics of the galaxy population, the model predicts a red fraction of satellites that is much higher than observed (see also Baldry et al. 2006; Coil et al. 2008).”
The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early-and late-type galaxies (2014, background): “…discovery of the bimodality in galaxy colour in the galaxy colour–magnitude and colour–mass diagrams from largescale surveys (Strateva et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004, 2006), the colour space between the two main populations – the green valley – has been viewed as the crossroads of galaxy…”
Are Brightest Halo Galaxies Central Galaxies (2010, background): “However, it has been pointed out that the standard, instantaneous implementation of this strangulation causes an over-quenching of satellite galaxies (e.g., Baldry et al. 2006; Weinmann et al. 2006; Kimm et al. 2009).”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, background): “In most semi-analytic models, hot gas associated with a halo is assumed to be stripped immediately after accretion onto a larger system, leading to a rapid decline in star formation and a reddening in colour (e.g. Wang et al. 2007; Weinmann et al. 2006; Baldry et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008).”