Near-ultraviolet signatures of environment-driven galaxy quenching in Sloan Digital Sky Survey groups

2016/09/07 by Jacob P. Crossett, Kevin A. Pimbblet, D. Heath Jones +5
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Galaxy group #Medicine #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Population #Satellite galaxy #Sky #Star formation #Stars #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw2228

12 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

openalex publication_date 2016/09/07 · arxiv created 2016/09/08 · openalex created_date 2016/09/16 · arxiv updated 2016/09/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We have investigated the effect of group environment on residual star formation in galaxies, using Galaxy Evolution Explorer near-ultraviolet (NUV) galaxy photometry with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey group catalogue of Yang et al. We compared the (NUV − r) colours of grouped and non-grouped galaxies, and find a significant increase in the fraction of red sequence galaxies with blue (NUV − r) colours outside of groups. When comparing galaxies in mass-matched samples of satellite (non-central), and non-grouped galaxies, we found a >4σ difference in the distribution of (NUV − r) colours, and an (NUV − r) blue fraction >3σ higher outside groups. A comparison of satellite and non-grouped samples has found the NUV fraction is a factor of ∼2 lower for satellite galaxies between 1010.5 and | 10^10.7 M_\odot |⁠, showing that higher mass galaxies are more likely to have residual star formation when not influenced by a group potential. There was a higher (NUV − r) blue fraction of galaxies with lower Sérsic indices (n < 3) outside of groups, not seen in the satellite sample. We have used stellar population models of Bruzual & Charlot with multiple burst, or exponentially declining star formation histories to find that many of the (NUV − r) blue non-grouped galaxies can be explained by a slow (∼2 Gyr) decay of star formation, compared to the satellite galaxies. We suggest that taken together, the difference in (NUV − r) colours between samples can be explained by a population of secularly evolving, non-grouped galaxies, where star formation declines slowly. This slow channel is less prevalent in group environments where more rapid quenching can occur.

Citations

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