TY - JOUR
T1 - Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA)
T2 - Trends in galaxy colours, morphology, and stellar populations with large scale structure, group, and pair environments
AU - Alpaslan, Mehmet
AU - Driver, Simon
AU - Robotham, Aaron S. G.
AU - Obreschkow, Danail
AU - Andrae, Ellen
AU - Cluver, Michelle
AU - Kelvin, Lee S.
AU - Lange, Rebecca
AU - Owers, Matt
AU - Taylor, Edward N.
AU - Andrews, Stephen K.
AU - Bamford, Steven
AU - Bland-Hawthorn, Joss
AU - Brough, Sarah
AU - Brown, Michael J. I.
AU - Colless, Matthew
AU - Davies, Luke J. M.
AU - Eardley, Elizabeth
AU - Grootes, Meiert W.
AU - Hopkins, Andrew M.
AU - Kennedy, Rebecca
AU - Liske, Jochen
AU - Lara-Lopez, Maritza A.
AU - Lopez-Sanchez, Angel R.
AU - Loveday, Jon
AU - Madore, Barry F.
AU - Mahajan, Smriti
AU - Meyer, Martin
AU - Moffett, Amanda
AU - Norberg, Peder
AU - Penny, Samantha
AU - Pimbblet, Kevin A.
AU - Popescu, Cristina C.
AU - Seibert, Mark
AU - Tuffs, Richard
N1 - 22 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS on May 20, 2015
PY - 2015/6/22
Y1 - 2015/6/22
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - astro-ph.GA
KW - galaxies: clusters: general
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stv1176
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stv1176
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 451
SP - 3249
EP - 3268
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 3
ER -