CaltechAUTHORS
Published May 2023 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

The Local Cluster Survey II: disc-dominated cluster galaxies with suppressed star formation

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Siena College
  • 2. ROR icon Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
  • 3. ROR icon University of Kansas
  • 4. ROR icon University of Waterloo
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
  • 7. ROR icon Galaxies, Etoiles, Physique et Instrumentation
  • 8. ROR icon University of Arizona

Abstract

We investigate the role of dense environments in suppressing star formation by studying log₁₀(M_⋆/M_⊙) > 9.7 star-forming galaxies in nine clusters from the Local Cluster Survey (0.0137 < z < 0.0433) and a large comparison field sample drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We compare the star-formation rate (SFR) versus stellar mass relation as a function of environment and morphology. After carefully controlling for mass, we find that in all environments, the degree of SFR suppression increases with increasing bulge-to-total (B/T) ratio. In addition, the SFRs of cluster and infall galaxies at a fixed mass are more suppressed than their field counterparts at all values of B/T. These results suggest a quenching mechanism that is linked to bulge growth that operates in all environments and an additional mechanism that further reduces the SFRs of galaxies in dense environments. We limit the sample to B/T ≤ 0.3 galaxies to control for the trends with morphology and find that the excess population of cluster galaxies with suppressed SFRs persists. We model the timescale associated with the decline of SFRs in dense environments and find that the observed SFRs of the cluster core galaxies are consistent with a range of models including: a mechanism that acts slowly and continuously over a long (2-5 Gyr) timescale, and a more rapid (< 1 Gyr) quenching event that occurs after a delay period of 1-6 Gyr. Quenching may therefore start immediately after galaxies enter clusters.

Additional Information

© 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). The material is based upon work supported by NASA under award No 80NSSC21K0640 and 80NSSC21K0641. RAF gratefully acknowledges support from NSF grants AST-0847430 and AST-1716657. BV acknowledges financial contribution from the grant PRIN MIUR 2017 n.20173ML3WW_001 (PI Cimatti) and from the INAF main-stream funding programme (PI Vulcani). GHR acknowledges support from NSF-AST 1716690. The authors thank the hospitality of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern (Switzerland) and of the Lorentz Center in Leiden (Netherlands). Regular group meetings in these institutes allowed the authors to make substantial progress on the project and finalize this work. This research used ASTROPY, a community developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007), and TOPCAT (Taylor 2005). Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. DATA AVAILABILITY. The data and python code used in this analysis are available at https://github.com/rfinn/LCS-paper2.

Attached Files

Published - stad640.pdf

Files

stad640.pdf

Files (2.9 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:bc97f49e5596d62d33a67540033ed4fb
2.9 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
121292
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20230502-957335100.2

Related works

Describes
https://github.com/rfinn/LCS-paper2 (URL)

Funding

NASA
80NSSC21K0640
NASA
80NSSC21K0641
NSF
AST-0847430
NSF
AST-1716657
Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR)
20173ML3WW_001
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)
NSF
AST-1716690
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Participating Institutions
Department of Energy (DOE)

Dates

Created
2023-05-05
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-05-05
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)