The distribution of satellites around massive galaxies at 1<z<3 in ZFOURGE/CANDELS: dependence on star formation activity

Abstract

We study the statistical distribution of satellites around star-forming and quiescent central galaxies at 1<z<3 using imaging from the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE) and the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). The deep near-IR data select satellites down to $\log (M/M_{\odot })>9$ at z<3. The radial satellite distribution around centrals is consistent with a projected NFW profile. Massive quiescent centrals, $\log (M/M_{\odot })>10.78$, have $\sim$2 times the number of satellites compared to star-forming centrals with a significance of 2.7$\sigma$ even after accounting for differences in the centrals' stellar-mass distributions. We find no statistical difference in the satellite distributions of intermediate-mass quiescent and star-forming centrals, $10.48<\log (M/M_{\odot })<10.78$. Comparing to the Guo2011 semi-analytic model, the excess number of satellites indicates that quiescent centrals have halo masses 0.3 dex larger than star-forming centrals, even when the stellar-mass distributions are fixed. We use a simple toy model that relates halo mass and quenching, which roughly reproduces the observed quenched fractions and the differences in halo mass between star-forming and quenched galaxies only if galaxies have a quenching probability that increases with halo mass from $\sim$0 for $\log (M_h/M_{\odot })\sim$11 to $\sim$1 for $\log (M_h/M_{\odot })\sim$13.5. A single halo-mass quenching threshold is unable to reproduce the quiescent fraction and satellite distribution of centrals. Therefore, while halo quenching may be an important mechanism, it is unlikely to be the only factor driving quenching. It remains unclear why a high fraction of centrals remain star-forming even in relatively massive halos.

19 pages, 17 figures, accepted by ApJ. Information on ZFOURGE can be found at http://zfourge.tamu.edu

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• The FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE): ultraviolet to far-infrared catalogs, medium-bandwidth photometric redshifts with improved accuracy, stellar masses, and confirmation of quiescent galaxies to z~3.5
• ZFOURGE/CANDELS: On the Evolution of M* Galaxy Progenitors from z=3 to 0.5
• ZFIRE: A KECK/MOSFIRE Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies in Rich Environments at z~2
• Characterization of Low Surface Brightness structures in annotated deep images
• The Differential Size Growth of Field and Cluster Galaxies at z=2.1 Using the ZFOURGE Survey
• A comparative study of satellite galaxies in Milky Way-like galaxies from HSC, DECaLS and SDSS
• Satellite quenching was not important for z$\sim$1 clusters: most quenching occurred during infall
• The stellar mass in and around isolated central galaxies: connections to the total mass distribution through galaxy-galaxy lensing in the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey
• A Machine Learning Approach to Measuring the Quenched Fraction of Low-Mass Satellites Beyond the Local Group
• LARgE Survey -- III. Environments of Ultra-Massive Passive Galaxies at Cosmic Noon: BCG progenitors growing through mergers
• Dark against luminous matter around isolated central galaxies: a comparative study between modern surveys and Illustris-TNG