Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Trends in galaxy colours, morphology, and stellar populations with large scale structure, group, and pair environments

Mehmet Alpaslan, Simon Driver, Aaron S. G. Robotham, Danail Obreschkow, Ellen Andrae, Michelle Cluver, Lee S. Kelvin, Rebecca Lange, Matt Owers, Edward N. Taylor, Stephen K. Andrews, Steven Bamford, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Sarah Brough, Michael J. I. Brown, Matthew Colless, Luke J. M. Davies, Elizabeth Eardley, Meiert W. Grootes, Andrew M. HopkinsRebecca Kennedy, Jochen Liske, Maritza A. Lara-Lopez, Angel R. Lopez-Sanchez, Jon Loveday, Barry F. Madore, Smriti Mahajan, Martin Meyer, Amanda Moffett, Peder Norberg, Samantha Penny, Kevin A. Pimbblet, Cristina C. Popescu, Mark Seibert, Richard Tuffs

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

202 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We explore trends in galaxy properties with Mpc-scale structures using catalogues of environment and large scale structure from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. Existing GAMA catalogues of large scale structure, group and pair membership allow us to construct galaxy stellar mass functions for different environmental types. To avoid simply extracting the known underlying correlations between galaxy properties and stellar mass, we create a mass matched sample of galaxies with stellar masses between $9.5 \leq \log{M_*/h^{-2} M_{\odot}} \leq 11$ for each environmental population. Using these samples, we show that mass normalised galaxies in different large scale environments have similar energy outputs, $u-r$ colours, luminosities, and morphologies. Extending our analysis to group and pair environments, we show galaxies that are not in groups or pairs exhibit similar characteristics to each other regardless of broader environment. For our mass controlled sample, we fail to see a strong dependence of S\'{e}rsic index or galaxy luminosity on halo mass, but do find that it correlates very strongly with colour. Repeating our analysis for galaxies that have not been mass controlled introduces and amplifies trends in the properties of galaxies in pairs, groups, and large scale structure, indicating that stellar mass is the most important predictor of the galaxy properties we examine, as opposed to environmental classifications.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3249-3268
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume451
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2015

Keywords

  • astro-ph.GA
  • galaxies: clusters: general

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Trends in galaxy colours, morphology, and stellar populations with large scale structure, group, and pair environments'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this