The Evolution of the Star Formation Activity in Galaxies and Its Dependence on Environment

By B. Poggianti, A. von der Linden, G. de Lucia, Vandana Desai, L. Simard, C. Halliday, A. Aragón-Salamanca, Richard G. Bower, J. Varela, P. Best and 9 more. 2005

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We study how the proportion of star-forming galaxies evolves between z = 0.8 and 0 as a function of galaxy environment, using the O II line in emission as a signature of ongoing star formation. Our high-z data set comprises 16 clusters, 10 groups, and another 250 galaxies in poorer groups and the field at z = 0.4-0.8 from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey, plus another 9 massive clusters at similar redshifts. As a local comparison, we use galaxy systems selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at 0.04 < z < 0.08. At high z most systems follow a broad anticorrelation between the fraction of star-forming galaxies and the system velocity dispersion. At face value, this suggests that at z = 0.4-0.8 the mass of the system largely determines the proportion of galaxies with ongoing star formation. At these redshifts the strength of star formation (as measured by the O II equivalent width) in star-forming galaxies is also found to vary systematically with environment. SDSS clusters have much lower fractions of star-forming galaxies than clusters at z = 0.4-0.8 and, in contrast with the distant clusters, show a plateau for velocity dispersions ≥550 km s-1, where the fraction of galaxies with O II emission does not vary systematically with velocity dispersion. We quantify the evolution of the proportion of star-forming galaxies as a function of the system velocity dispersion and find that it is strongest in intermediate-mass systems (σ ~ 500-600 km s-1 at z = 0). To understand the origin of the observed trends, we use the Press-Schechter formalism and the Millennium Simulation and show that galaxy star formation histories may be closely related to the growth history of clusters and groups. If the scenario we propose is roughly correct, the link between galaxy properties and environment is extremely simple to predict purely from a knowledge of the growth of dark matter structures.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e1192c5da8f96e01b34be1fe156d2e42a2980059

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Citations in the corpus

The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the relationship between galaxy properties and environment at z∼ 1 (2006, background): “…probed in such studies has been limited, with galaxies grouped into coarse classifications (such as field, group and cluster populations) and with statistically small spectroscopic sample sizes (e.g. Couch et al. 1998; Treu et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2005; Tanaka et al. 2005; Poggianti et al. 2006).”
The correlation of star formation quenching with internal galaxy properties and environment (2008, background): “Journal compilation C© 2009 RAS Kauffmann et al. 2004; Tanaka et al. 2004; Christlein & Zabludoff 2005; Poggianti et al. 2006).”
THE GALAXY CONTENT OF SDSS CLUSTERS AND GROUPS (2007, background): “…a trend with redshift (Allington-Smith et al. 1993; Oemler et al. 1997; Balogh et al. 1997; Couch et al. 1998; van Dokkum et al. 2000; Fasano et al. 2000; Lubin et al. 2002; Goto et al. 2003; Treu et al. 2003; Wilman et al. 2005; Poggianti et al. 2006; Desai et al. 2007; van der Wel et al. 2007).”
The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, background): “Interestingly, the observed fraction of red/passive galaxies does indeed show a large halo-to-halo scatter, that appears to increase at lower halo masses (Poggianti et al. 2006; Balogh & McGee 2010).”
EVOLUTION OF THE COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATION IN GALAXY CLUSTERS AT z ∼ 1 FROM THE ACS INTERMEDIATE REDSHIFT CLUSTER SURVEY (2008, background): “The results of Poggianti et al. (2006) suggest that only part of the current early–type population experienced infall and quenching, while another part constitutes a pristine, older galaxy population established during the early moments of cluster formation.”
Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, result): “This also agrees with Poggianti et al. (2006) who find that for SDSS groups with& 1013.4M⊙ (assuming the velocity dispersion to mass conversion given by eqn.”
A Wide-Field Survey of Two z ~ 0.5 Galaxy Clusters: Identifying the Physical Processes Responsible for the Observed Transformation of Spirals into S0s (2007, background): “…in-depth, wide-field comparative study of two prominent clusters, we hope to provide a complement to other observational (e.g., Cooper et al. 2007; Poggianti et al. 2006) and theoretical investigations (e.g., de Lucia et al. 2006) which trace with a broad brush the evolution in star formation…”
The DEEP2 galaxy redshift survey: evolution of the colour–density relation at 0.4 < z < 1.35 (2006, background): “Furthermore, high–resolution imaging and spectroscopic data in increasingly more distant clusters (to z ∼ 1) have shown that the trends observed locally persist to higher z, at least in the highest density environments (e.g., Balogh et al. 1997; Treu et al. 2003; Poggianti et al. 2006).”
STELLAR AND TOTAL BARYON MASS FRACTIONS IN GROUPS AND CLUSTERS SINCE REDSHIFT 1 (2009, background): “…it has been suggested that the ICL may (also) origin from the stripping of non–BCG galaxies inside the group/cluster (Purcell et al. 2008; Pierini et al. 2008), which are on average bluer than the BCG, especially in groups (Zabludoff & Mulchaey 1998; Weinmann et al. 2006; Poggianti et al. 2006).”
The effect of ram pressure on the star formation, mass distribution and morphology of galaxies (2009, background): “…requests to: W. Kapferer, e-mail: wolfgang.e.kapferer@uibk.ac.at sible way is to study the evolution of the star formation activity in galaxies and the dependence of this quantity on the galaxies environment (Balogh et al. 2002, Gerken et al. 2004, Poggianti et al. 2006, Verdugo et al. 2008).”
BUDHIES II: a phase-space view of H i gas stripping and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies (2015, background): “(e.g. Dressler 1980; Lewis et al. 2002; Gómez et al. 2003; Koopmann & Kenney 2004; Boselli & Gavazzi 2006; Poggianti et al. 2006; Moran et al. 2007; Bamford et al. 2009; Jaffé et al. 2011b).”
The build-up of the colour-magnitude relation in galaxy clusters since z ~ 0.8 (2006, methodology): “We note that Table 4 in Poggianti et al. (2006) indicates that a cluster with velocity dispersion ∼ 600 km s−1 at z ∼ 0.6 evolves into a system with velocity dispersion ∼ 700 km s−1 at z ∼ 0.”
Why does the environmental influence on group and cluster galaxies extend beyond the virial radius (2012, background): “There is, however, mounting observational evidence that the colour–density relation persists out to distances significantly greater than r200 (e.g., Balogh et al. 1999; Hansen et al. 2009; Haines et al. 2009; von der Linden et al. 2010; Lu et al. 2012; Wetzel, Tinker & Conroy 2012; Rasmussen et al. ”
The accretion of galaxies into groups and clusters (2009, methodology): “The scatter in, for instance, the fraction of early-type galaxies or optical line emitting galaxies in clusters at z = 0 is much smaller than 40 per cent (Dressler 1980; Poggianti et al. 2006; Finn et al. 2008).”