The Effects of Environment on Morphological Evolution at 0 < z < 1.2 in the COSMOS Survey

2007/03/26 by P. L. Capak, P. Capak, Roberto Abraham +10 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #COSMIC cancer database #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Physics #Power law #Redshift #Spiral galaxy #Star formation #Statistics #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/518424

12 pages, 13 figures, to appear in the COSMOS special issue of the ApJS

arxiv created 2007/03/26 · openalex publication_date 2007/08/31 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We explore the evolution of the morphology-density relation using the COSMOS Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and previous cluster studies. The Gini parameter measured in a Petrosian aperture is found to be an effective way of selecting early-type galaxies free from systematic effects with redshift. We find that galaxies are transformed from late- (spiral and irregular) to early-type (E+S0) galaxies more rapidly in dense than in sparse regions. At a given density, the early-type fraction grows constantly with cosmic time, but the growth rate increases with density as a power law of index 0.29 ± 0.02. However, at densities below 100 galaxies Mpc -2 , no evolution is found at z > 0.4. In contrast, the star formation-density relation shows strong evolution at all densities and redshifts, suggesting that different physical mechanisms are responsible for the morphological and star formation transformation. We show that photometric redshifts can measure local galaxy environment, but that the present results are limited by photometric redshift error to densities above Σ = 3 galaxies Mpc -2 .

Citations

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• A Direct Measurement of Major Galaxy Mergers atz3
• The Size Evolution of High-Redshift Galaxies
• The Mass Assembly Histories of Galaxies of Various Morphologies in the GOODS Fields
• Evidence for a Gradual Decline in the Universal Rest-Frame Ultraviolet Luminosity Density for [CLC][ITAL]z[/ITAL][/CLC] < 1
• Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars
• Extragalactic nebulae.

Cited by

• THE 10k zCOSMOS: MORPHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF GALAXIES IN THE GROUP ENVIRONMENT SINCEz∼1
• The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS). VIII. The Influence of the Cluster Properties on Hα Emitter Galaxies at 0.3 < z < 0.7
• Galaxy stellar mass functions of different morphological types in clusters, and their evolution between z= 0.8 and 0
• A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DENSITY FIELD ESTIMATION FOR GALAXIES: NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES WITH ENVIRONMENT IN COSMOS OUT TOz∼ 3
• DETECTION OF DIFFUSE NEUTRAL INTRAGROUP MEDIUM IN HICKSON COMPACT GROUPS
• Kinematics and stellar populations of low-luminosity early-type galaxies in the Abell 496 cluster