Shaping physical properties of galaxy subtypes in the VIPERS survey: environment matters

Abstract

Aims. This study aims to explore the relationship between the physical properties of different galaxy subclasses and their environment based on the analysis of 31 631 VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) galaxies observed at 0.5 < z < 0.9. Methods. We use the results of an unsupervised clustering algorithm to distinguish 11 subclasses of VIPERS galaxies based on the multi-dimensional feature space defined by rest-frame UV to NIR colours presented in Siudek et al (2018a). We investigate the relationship between the properties of these subclasses of galaxies and their local environment, defined as the galaxy density contrast derived from the 5th nearest neighbour technique. Results. We confirm that the galaxy population-density relation is already in place at z ~ 0.9, with the blue galaxy fraction decreasing with density, compensated by an increase of the red fraction. On average red galaxies in the high-density environment are larger by 28% than the ones in low-density environments. In particular, we find one group of galaxies, subclass C3, whose increase of size with time can be explained mainly as the result of mergers; for other red subclasses, mergers would not seem to play a major role (subclass C2) or play a negligible role (subclass C1). The properties of the green galaxies (subclasses C4-6) depend on whether their stellar mass is above or below a transition mass. Low-mass green galaxies appear to have grown through secular processes, while in high-mass green galaxies mass assembly appears to be dominated by mergers. When it comes to blue galaxies, the trend of decreasing fraction with denser environments seen for the group as a whole (subclasses C7-11) is found to be driven mostly by one group of galaxies, subclass C10. These are compact low-mass galaxies with high sSFRs, that are preferentially found in low-density environments.

Accepted for publication in A&A. 15 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (21)

• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment
• The UV-Optical Color Magnitude Diagram II: Physical Properties and Morphological Evolution On and Off of a Star-Forming Sequence
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Evolution of the Color-Density Relation at 0.4 < z < 1.35
• The evolution of star formation histories of quiescent galaxies
• The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey: The build-up of the colour-density relation
• Green Valley Galaxies
• The relation between star formation, morphology and local density in high redshift clusters and groups
• The Different Physical Mechanisms that Drive the Star-Formation Histories of Giant and Dwarf Galaxies
• Machine Learning in Astronomy: a practical overview
• The effects of environment on morphological evolution between 0<z<1.2 in the COSMOS Survey
• Cosmic Web of Galaxies in the COSMOS Field: Public Catalog and Different Quenching for Centrals and Satellites
• Simultaneous model-based clustering and visualization in the Fisher discriminative subspace
• On the interdependence of galaxy morphology, star formation, and environment in massive galaxies in the nearby Universe
• Star formation of far-IR AGN and non-AGN galaxies in the green valley: possible implication of AGN positive feedback
• Pushing automated morphological classifications to their limits with the Dark Energy Survey
• The Morphology-Density relationship in 1<z<2 clusters
• CANDELS Sheds Light on the Environmental Quenching of Low-mass Galaxies
• The effect of environment on star formation activity and morphology at 0.5 < z < 2.5 in CANDELS
• Reconstructing the galaxy density field with photometric redshifts: II. Environment-dependent galaxy evolution since $z\simeq 3$
• Evidence for radially independent size growth of early-type galaxies in clusters

Cited by in corpus (9)

• The environment of AGN dwarf galaxies at z$\sim$0.7 from the VIPERS survey
• The first catalogue of spectroscopically confirmed red nuggets at z~0.7 from the VIPERS survey. Linking high-z red nuggets and local relics
• Denser Environments Cultivate Larger Galaxies: A Comprehensive Study beyond the Local Universe with 3 Million Hyper Suprime-Cam Galaxies
• Probing star formation rates and histories in AGN and non-AGN galaxies across diverse cosmic environments and extensive X-ray luminosity ranges
• Environments of red nuggets at z~0.7 from the VIPERS survey
• PAC.V. The Roles of Mass and Environment in the Quenching of Galaxies
• Decoding the IRX-β dust attenuation relation in star-forming galaxies at intermediate redshift
• From VIPERS to SDSS: Unveiling galaxy spectra evolution over 9 Gyr through unsupervised machine-learning
• Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): First Data Release Covering The D10 (COSMOS) Region