Galaxy triplets in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7: II. A connection with compact groups?

Abstract

We analyse a sample of 71 triplets of luminous galaxies derived from the work of O'Mill et al. (2012). We compare the properties of triplets and their members with those of control samples of compact groups, the ten brightest members of rich clusters, and galaxies in pairs. The triplets are restricted to have members with spectroscopic redshifts in the range 0.01<z<0.14 and Mr<-20.5. We analyse the stellar mass (SM) content, the star formation rates, the Dn(4000) parameter and colour index and also analyse different global properties of these systems as total star formation activity and global colours. We calculate the probability that the properties of galaxies in triplets are strongly correlated. We define the triplet compactness as a measure of the percentage of the system total area that is filled by the light of member galaxies. Our analysis suggest that triplet galaxy members behave similarly to compact group members and galaxies in rich clusters. We also find that systems comprising 3 blue, star-forming, young stellar population galaxies (blue triplets) are most probably real systems and not a chance configuration of interloping galaxies. The same holds for triplets composed by 3 red, non star-forming galaxies, showing the correlation of galaxy properties in these systems. From the analysis of the triplet as a whole, we conclude that, at a given total SM content, triplets show a total star formation activity and global colours similar to compact groups. However, blue triplets show a high total star formation activity with a lower SM content. From an analysis of the compactness parameter of the systems we find that light is even more concentrated in triplets than in compact groups. We propose that triplets composed by 3 luminous galaxies, should not be considered as an analogous of galaxy pairs with an extra member, but rather they are a natural extension of compact groups.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 12 pages, 7 figures

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