The physical properties of massive green valley galaxies as a function of environments at $0.5<z<2.5$ in 3D-\textit{HST}/CANDELS fields

Abstract

To investigate the effects of environment in the quenching phase, we study the empirical relations for green valley (GV) galaxies between overdensity and other physical properties (i.e., effective radius $r_{\mathrm{e}}$, Sérsic indices $n$, and specific star formation rate sSFR). Based on five 3D-{\it HST}/CANDELS fields, we construct a large sample of 2126 massive ($M_{\star} > 10^{10} M_{\sun}$) GV galaxies at $0.5<z<2.5$ and split it into the higher overdensity quarter and the lower overdensity quarter. The results shows that GV galaxies in denser environment have higher $n$ values and lower sSFR at $0.5<z<1$, while there is no discernible distinction at $1<z<2.5$. No significant enlarging or shrinking is found for GV galaxies in different environments within the same redshift bin. It suggests that a dense environment would promote the growth of bulge and suppress star formation activity of GV galaxies at $0.5<z<1.5$, but would not affect the galaxy size. We also study the dependence of the fraction of three populations (Blue Cloud, Green Valley, and Red Sequence) on both environments and $M_{\star }$. At a given $M_{\star }$, blue cloud fraction goes down with increasing environment density, while red sequence fraction is opposite. For the most massive GV galaxies, a sharp drop appears in the denser environment. Coupled with the mass dependence of three fractions in different redshift bins, our result implies that stellar mass and environments jointly promote the quenching process. Such dual effect is also confirmed by re-calculating the new effective GV fraction as the number of GV galaxies over the number of non-quiescent galaxies.

To be published in ApJ

References in corpus (26)

• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe
• 3D-HST+CANDELS: The Evolution of the Galaxy Size-Mass Distribution since $z=3$
• An ultra-deep near-infrared spectrum of a compact quiescent galaxy at z=2.2
• 3D-HST WFC3-selected Photometric Catalogs in the Five CANDELS/3D-HST Fields: Photometry, Photometric Redshifts and Stellar Masses
• Constraining the Low-Mass Slope of the Star Formation Sequence at 0.5<z<2.5
• The Evolution of Galaxy Structure over Cosmic Time
• Structure and star formation in galaxies out to z=3: evidence for surface density dependent evolution and upsizing
• Size evolution of the most massive galaxies at 1.7<z<3 from GOODS NICMOS survey imaging
• Green Valley Galaxies
• Cosmic Web of Galaxies in the COSMOS Field: Public Catalog and Different Quenching for Centrals and Satellites
• The Evolution of the Field and Cluster Morphology-Density Relation for Mass-Selected Samples of Galaxies
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: VIII. When Did Early-type Galaxies Form?
• MC${}^2$: Boosted AGN and star-formation activity in CIZA J2242.8+5301, a massive post-merger cluster at z=0.19
• The effect of the environment on the stellar mass - size relation of present-day galaxies
• The Star Formation and Extinction Co-Evolution of UV-Selected Galaxies over 0.05<z<1.2
• Morphological Fractions of Galaxies in WINGS Clusters: revisiting the Morphology-Density Paradigm
• Massive Galaxies are Larger in Dense Environments: Environmental Dependence of Mass-Size Relation of Early-Type Galaxies
• The Differential Size Growth of Field and Cluster Galaxies at z=2.1 Using the ZFOURGE Survey
• The Environment of Galaxies at Low Redshift
• Continuous Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators: Diagnostics for 0<z<3 Star Forming Galaxies
• Redshift Evolution of Green Valley Galaxies in Different Environments from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey
• The effect of environment on star formation activity and morphology at 0.5 < z < 2.5 in CANDELS
• Physical properties of compact star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 2-3$
• The effect of the morphological quenching mechanism on star formation activity at 0.5 < z < 1.5 in 3D-HST/CANDELS
• How accurate are infrared luminosities from monochromatic photometric extrapolation?

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Evolving Effect Of Cosmic Web Environment On Galaxy Quenching
• Dust sub-millimetre emission in green valley galaxies