4.7 Article

Do group dynamics play a role in the evolution of member galaxies?

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 435, Issue 2, Pages 1715-1726

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt1410

Keywords

galaxies: formation; galaxies: groups: general; galaxies: kinematics and dynamics

Funding

  1. National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
  2. Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/I00162X/1, ST/I001166/1] Funding Source: researchfish
  3. STFC [ST/I00162X/1, ST/I001166/1] Funding Source: UKRI

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We examine galaxy groups from the present epoch to z similar to 1 to explore the impact of group dynamics on galaxy evolution. We use group catalogues from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Group Environment and Evolution Collaboration (GEEC) and the high-redshift GEEC2 samples to study how the observed member properties depend on the galaxy stellar mass, group dynamical mass and dynamical state of the host group. We find a strong correlation between the fraction of non-star-forming (quiescent) galaxies and galaxy stellar mass, but do not detect a significant difference in the quiescent fraction with group dynamical mass, within our sample halo mass range of similar to 10(13)-10(14.5) M-circle dot, or with dynamical state. However, at z similar to 0.4 we do find some evidence that the quiescent fraction in low-mass galaxies [log(10)(M-star/M-circle dot) less than or similar to 10.5] is lower in groups with substructure. Additionally, our results show that the fraction of groups with non-Gaussian velocity distributions increases with redshift to z similar to 0.4, while the amount of detected substructure remains constant to z similar to 1. Based on these results, we conclude that for massive galaxies [log(10)(M-star/M-circle dot) greater than or similar to 10.5], evolution is most strongly correlated to the stellar mass of a galaxy with little or no additional effect related to either the group dynamical mass or the dynamical state. For low-mass galaxies, we do find some evidence of a correlation between the quiescent fraction and the amount of detected substructure, highlighting the need to probe further down the stellar mass function to elucidate the role of environment in galaxy evolution.

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