Mass and Redshift Dependence of Star Formation in Relaxed Galaxy Clusters

Abstract

We investigate the star-formation properties of dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters as a function of cluster mass for 308 low-redshift clusters drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) C4 cluster catalog. It is important to establish if cluster star-formation properties have a mass dependence before comparing clusters at different epochs, and here we use cluster velocity dispersion as a measure of cluster mass. We find that the total stellar mass, the number of star-forming galaxies, and total star-formation rate scale linearly with the number of member galaxies, with no residual dependence on cluster velocity dispersion. With the mass-dependence of cluster star-formation rates established, we compare the SDSS clusters with a sample of z = 0.75 clusters from the literature and find that on average the total H-alpha luminosity of the high-redshift clusters is 10 times greater than that of the low-redshift clusters. This can be explained by a decline in the H-alpha luminosities of individual cluster galaxies by a factor of up to 10 since z = 0.75. The magnitude of this evolution is comparable to that of field galaxies over a similar redshift interval, and thus the effect of the cluster environment on the evolution of star-forming galaxies is at most modest. Our results suggest that the physical mechanism driving the evolution of cluster star-formation rates is independent of cluster mass, at least for clusters with velocity dispersion greater than 450 km/s, and operates over a fairly long timescale such that the star-formation rates of individual galaxies decline by an order of magnitude over ~7 billion years. (Abridged)

15 pages; 13 figures; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (11)

• Strangulation in Galaxy Groups
• CIRS: Cluster Infall Regions in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I. Infall Patterns and Mass Profiles
• Star Formation and the Growth of Stellar Mass
• A Wide-field Survey of Two Z~0.5 Galaxy Clusters: Identifying the Physical Processes Responsible for the Observed Transformation of Spirals into S0s
• Properties of Galaxy Groups in the SDSS: II.- AGN Feedback and Star Formation Truncation
• IR observations of MS 1054-03: Star Formation and its Evolution in Rich Galaxy Clusters
• Revisiting the Baryon Fractions of Galaxy Clusters: A Comparison with WMAP 3-year Results
• The stellar mass content of distant galaxy groups
• RASS-SDSS Galaxy Cluster Survey. VI. The dependence of the cluster SFR on the cluster global properties
• The X-ray properties of optically-selected z>0.6 clusters in the ESO Distant Cluster Survey
• Reflections of Cluster Assembly in the Stellar Populations and Dynamics of Member Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (14)

• LoCuSS: The slow quenching of star formation in cluster galaxies and the need for pre-processing
• Environmental Effects on Satellite Galaxies: The Link Between Concentration, Size and Colour Profile
• The Assembly of Galaxy Clusters
• The relation between star formation, morphology and local density in high redshift clusters and groups
• Adding Environmental Gas Physics to the Semi-Analytic Method for Galaxy Formation: Gravitational Heating
• The Rest-Frame Optical Luminosity Function of Cluster Galaxies at z<0.8 and the Assembly of the Cluster Red Sequence
• The IR Luminosity Functions of Rich Clusters
• The UV luminosity function and star formation rate of the Coma cluster
• The Evolution of Star Formation Activity in Cluster Galaxies Over $0.15<z<1.5$
• Galaxy Clusters in the IRAC Dark Field II: Mid-IR Sources
• Star Formation in High-Redshift Cluster Ellipticals
• A Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission (VESTIGE) XV. The Halpha luminosity function of the Virgo cluster
• The Local Cluster Survey II: Disk-Dominated Cluster Galaxies with Suppressed Star Formation
• Star-formation Properties of z ~ 1 Galaxy Clusters and Groups from Horizon Run 5