Abstract
We present the galaxy size−mass (
R
e
–
M
*
) distributions using a stellar mass complete sample of ∼1.5 million galaxies, covering ∼100 deg
2
, with
log
(
M
*
/
M
⊙
)
>
10.2
(
9.2
)
over ...the redshift range 0.2 <
z
< 1.0 (
z
< 0.6) from the second public data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We confirm that, at fixed redshift and stellar mass over the range of
log
(
M
*
/
M
⊙
)
<
11
, star-forming galaxies are on average larger than quiescent galaxies. The large sample of galaxies with accurate size measurements, thanks to the excellent imaging quality, also enables us to demonstrate that the
R
e
–
M
*
relations of both populations have a form of a broken power law, with a clear change of slopes at a pivot stellar mass
M
p
. For quiescent galaxies, below an (evolving) pivot mass of
log
(
M
p
/
M
⊙
)
=
10.2
–
10.6
, the relation follows
R
e
∝
M
∗
0.1
; above
M
p
the relation is steeper and follows
R
e
∝
M
*
0.6
–
0.7
. For star-forming galaxies, below
log
(
M
p
/
M
⊙
)
∼
10.7
the relation follows
R
e
∝
M
*
0.2
; above
M
p
the relation evolves with redshift and follows
R
e
∝
M
*
0.3
–
0.6
. The shallow power-law slope for quiescent galaxies below
M
p
indicates that
large
low-mass quiescent galaxies have sizes similar to those of their counterpart star-forming galaxies. We take this as evidence that large low-mass quiescent galaxies have been recently quenched (presumably through environment-specific processes) without significant structural transformation. Interestingly, the pivot stellar mass of the
R
e
–
M
*
relations for both populations also coincides with the mass at which half of the galaxy population is quiescent, implying that the pivot mass represents the transition of galaxy growth from being dominated by in situ star formation to being dominated by (dry) mergers.
We examine the kinematic morphology of early-type galaxies (ETGs) in eight galaxy clusters in the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral-field spectrograph Galaxy Survey. The clusters cover a mass range of ...and we measure spatially resolved stellar kinematics for 315 member galaxies with stellar masses within 1 R200 of the cluster centers. We calculate the spin parameter, λR, and use this to classify the kinematic morphology of the galaxies as fast or slow rotators (SRs). The total fraction of SRs in the ETG population is FSR = 0.14 0.02 and does not depend on host cluster mass. Across the eight clusters, the fraction of SRs increases with increasing local overdensity. We also find that the slow-rotator fraction increases at small clustercentric radii (Rcl < 0.3 R200), and note that there is also an increase in the slow-rotator fraction at Rcl ∼ 0.6 R200. The SRs at these larger radii reside in the cluster substructure. We find that the strongest increase in the slow-rotator fraction occurs with increasing stellar mass. After accounting for the strong correlation with stellar mass, we find no significant relationship between spin parameter and local overdensity in the cluster environment. We conclude that the primary driver for the kinematic morphology-density relationship in galaxy clusters is the changing distribution of galaxy stellar mass with the local environment. The presence of SRs in the substructure suggests that the cluster kinematic morphology-density relationship is a result of mass segregation of slow-rotating galaxies forming in groups that later merge with clusters and sink to the cluster center via dynamical friction.
Quenching star formation in cluster galaxies Taranu, Dan S.; Hudson, Michael J.; Balogh, Michael L. ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
05/2014, Volume:
440, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In order to understand the processes that quench star formation in cluster galaxies, we construct a library of subhalo orbits drawn from ... cold dark matter cosmological N-body simulations of four ...rich clusters. We combine these orbits with models of star formation followed by environmental quenching, comparing model predictions with observed bulge and disc colours and stellar absorption line-strength indices of luminous cluster galaxies. Models in which the bulge stellar populations depend only on the galaxy subhalo mass while the disc is quenched upon infall are acceptable fits to the data. An exponential disc quenching time-scale of 3-3.5 Gyr is preferred. Quenching in lower mass groups prior to infall ('pre-processing') provides better fits, with similar quenching time-scales. Models with short (...1 Gyr) quenching time-scales yield excessively steep cluster-centric gradients in disc colours and Balmer line indices, even if quenching is delayed for several Gyr. The data slightly prefer models where quenching occurs only for galaxies falling within ... These results imply that the environments of rich clusters must impact star formation rates of infalling galaxies on relatively long time-scales, indicative of gentler quenching mechanisms such as slow 'strangulation' over more rapid ram-pressure stripping. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
We investigate the velocity versus position phase space of z ~ 1 cluster galaxies using a set of 424 spectroscopic redshifts in nine clusters drawn from the GCLASS survey. Dividing the galaxy ...population into three categories, that is, quiescent, star-forming, and poststarburst, we find that these populations have distinct distributions in phase space. Using several zoom simulations of clusters, we show that the coherent distribution of the poststarbursts can be reasonably well reproduced using a simple quenching scenario. The poststarburst phase space is not well reproduced using long quenching timescales (tau sub(Q) > 0.5 Gyr) or by quenching galaxies at larger radii (R ~ R sub(200)). We compare this quenching timescale to the timescale implied by the stellar populations of the poststarburst galaxies and find that the poststarburst spectra are well-fit by a rapid quenching (tau sub(Q) = 0.4 super(+0.3) sub(-0.4) Gyr) of a typical star-forming galaxy.
We present collisionless simulations of dry mergers in groups of 3 to 25 galaxies to test the hypothesis that elliptical galaxies form at the centers of such groups. Mock observations of the central ...remnants confirm their similarity to ellipticals, despite having no dissipational component. We vary the profile of the original spiral's bulge and find that ellipticals formed from spirals with exponential bulges have too low Sersic indices. Mergers of spirals with de Vaucouleurs (classical) bulges produce remnants with larger Sersic indices correlated with luminosity, as with Sloan Digital Sky Survey ellipticals. Exponential bulge mergers are better fits to faint ellipticals, whereas classical bulge mergers better match luminous ellipticals. Similarly, luminous ellipticals are better reproduced by remnants undergoing many (>5) mergers, and fainter ellipticals by those with fewer mergers. The remnants follow tight size-luminosity and velocity dispersion-luminosity (Faber-Jackson) relations (<0.12 dex scatter), demonstrating that stochastic merging can produce tight scaling relations if the merging galaxies also follow tight scaling relations. The slopes of the size-luminosity and Faber-Jackson relations are close to observations but slightly shallower in the former case. Both relations' intercepts are offset-remnants are too large but have too low dispersions at fixed luminosity. Some remnants show substantial (upsilon/sigma > 0.1) rotational support, although most are slow rotators and few are very fast rotators (upsilon/sigma > 0.5). These findings contrast with previous studies concluding that dissipation is necessary to produce ellipticals from binary mergers of spirals. Multiple, mostly minor and dry mergers can produce bright ellipticals, whereas significant dissipation could be required to produce faint, rapidly rotating ellipticals.
We use integral-field spectroscopy from the SAMI Galaxy Survey to identify galaxies that show evidence of recent quenching of star formation. The galaxies exhibit strong Balmer absorption in the ...absence of ongoing star formation in more than 10% of their spectra within the SAMI field of view. These -strong (HDS) galaxies (HDSGs) are rare, making up only ∼2% (25/1220) of galaxies with stellar mass > 10. The HDSGs make up a significant fraction of nonpassive cluster galaxies (15%; 17/115) and a smaller fraction (2.0%; 8/387) of the nonpassive population in low-density environments. The majority (9/17) of cluster HDSGs show evidence of star formation at their centers, with the HDS regions found in the outer parts of the galaxy. Conversely, the HDS signal is more evenly spread across the galaxy for the majority (6/8) of HDSGs in low-density environments and is often associated with emission lines that are not due to star formation. We investigate the location of the HDSGs in the clusters, finding that they are exclusively within 0.6R200 of the cluster center and have a significantly higher velocity dispersion relative to the cluster population. Comparing their distribution in projected phase space to those derived from cosmological simulations indicates that the cluster HDSGs are consistent with an infalling population that has entered the central 0.5r200,3D cluster region within the last ∼1 Gyr. In the eight of nine cluster HDSGs with central star formation, the extent of star formation is consistent with that expected of outside-in quenching by ram pressure stripping. Our results indicate that the cluster HDSGs are currently being quenched by ram pressure stripping on their first passage through the cluster.
ABSTRACT
We derive single Sérsic fits and bulge-disc decompositions for 13 096 galaxies at redshifts z < 0.08 in the GAMA II equatorial survey regions in the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) g, r, and i ...bands. The surface brightness fitting is performed using the Bayesian two-dimensional profile fitting code ProFit. We fit three models to each galaxy in each band independently with a fully automated Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis: a single Sérsic model, a Sérsic plus exponential and a point source plus exponential. After fitting the galaxies, we perform model selection and flag galaxies for which none of our models are appropriate (mainly mergers/Irregular galaxies). The fit quality is assessed by visual inspections, comparison to previous works, comparison of independent fits of galaxies in the overlap regions between KiDS tiles and bespoke simulations. The latter two are also used for a detailed investigation of systematic error sources. We find that our fit results are robust across various galaxy types and image qualities with minimal biases. Errors given by the MCMC underestimate the true errors typically by factors 2–3. Automated model selection criteria are accurate to $\gt 90{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ as calibrated by visual inspection of a subsample of galaxies. We also present g−r component colours and the corresponding colour–magnitude diagram, consistent with previous works despite our increased fit flexibility. Such reliable structural parameters for the components of a diverse sample of galaxies across multiple bands will be integral to various studies of galaxy properties and evolution. All results are integrated into the GAMA database.
Abstract
We present the first major release of data from the SAMI Galaxy Survey. This data release focuses on the emission-line physics of galaxies. Data Release One includes data for 772 galaxies, ...about 20 per cent of the full survey. Galaxies included have the redshift range 0.004 < z < 0.092, a large mass range (7.6 < log M*/ M⊙ < 11.6), and star formation rates of ∼10−4 to ∼101M⊙ yr−1. For each galaxy, we include two spectral cubes and a set of spatially resolved 2D maps: single- and multi-component emission-line fits (with dust-extinction corrections for strong lines), local dust extinction, and star formation rate. Calibration of the fibre throughputs, fluxes, and differential atmospheric refraction has been improved over the Early Data Release. The data have average spatial resolution of 2.16 arcsec (full width at half-maximum) over the 15 arcsec diameter field of view and spectral (kinematic) resolution of R = 4263 (σ = 30 km s−1) around H α. The relative flux calibration is better than 5 per cent, and absolute flux calibration has an rms of 10 per cent. The data are presented online through the Australian Astronomical Observatory's Data Central.
ABSTRACT Observations consistently show that elliptical galaxies follow a tight "fundamental plane" (FP) scaling relation between size, mean surface brightness, and velocity dispersion, with the form .... This relation not only has very small (<0.05 dex) intrinsic scatter, but also has significantly different coefficients from the expected virial scaling (a "tilt"). We analyze hundreds of simulations of elliptical galaxies formed from mergers of spiral galaxies in groups to determine if the FP can emerge from multiple, mostly minor and hierarchical collisionless mergers. We find that these simulated ellipticals lie on a similar FP with and . The scatter about this plane is not larger than observed, while the tilt is in the correct sense, although a is larger than for typical observations. This supports the idea that collisionless mergers can contribute significantly to the tilt of the FP. The tilt is mainly driven by a mass-dependent dark matter fraction, such that more massive galaxies have larger dark matter fractions within Re. We further discuss the origin of this mass-dependent dark matter fraction and its compatibility with strong lensing observations, as well as the links between the FP, dynamical masses, and the virial theorem.