The galaxy morphology-density relation in the EAGLE simulation

Abstract

The optical morphology of galaxies is strongly related to galactic environment, with the fraction of early-type galaxies increasing with local galaxy density. In this work we present the first analysis of the galaxy morphology-density relation in a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We use a convolutional neural network, trained on observed galaxies, to perform visual morphological classification of galaxies with stellar masses $M_{\ast }>10^{10}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ in the EAGLE simulation into elliptical, lenticular and late-type (spiral/irregular) classes. We find that EAGLE reproduces both the galaxy morphology-density and morphology-mass relations. Using the simulations, we find three key processes that result in the observed morphology-density relation: (i) transformation of disc-dominated galaxies from late-type (spiral) to lenticular galaxies through gas stripping in high-density environments, (ii) formation of lenticular galaxies by merger-induced black hole feedback in low-density environments, and (iii) an increasing fraction of high-mass galaxies, which are more often elliptical galaxies, at higher galactic densities.

arXiv comment19 pages, 17 figures, published in MNRAS

References in corpus (132)

• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• The physical properties of star forming galaxies in the low redshift universe
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• Galaxy Harassment and the Evolution of Clusters of Galaxies
• Gasdynamics and Starbursts in Major Mergers
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling III: model calibration, comparison, and evaluation
• Evolution since z = 0.5 of the Morphology-Density relation for Clusters of Galaxies
• Substructures in hydrodynamical cluster simulations
• The formation history of elliptical galaxies
• Minor mergers and the size evolution of elliptical galaxies
• The effect of photo-ionization on the cooling rates of enriched, astrophysical plasmas
• Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment
• A unified model for AGN feedback in cosmological simulations of structure formation
• Morphological Transformation from Galaxy Harassment
• Cosmological simulations of the growth of supermassive black holes and feedback from active galactic nuclei: method and tests
• Black holes in galaxy mergers: The formation of red elliptical galaxies
• Rotation-invariant convolutional neural networks for galaxy morphology prediction
• The SAURON project -- IX. A kinematic classification for early-type galaxies
• The ATLAS3D project - III. A census of the stellar angular momentum within the effective radius of early-type galaxies: unveiling the distribution of Fast and Slow Rotators
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The environmental dependence of galaxy star formation rates near clusters
• Chemical enrichment in cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations
• On the relation between the Schmidt and Kennicutt-Schmidt star formation laws and its implications for numerical simulations
• The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time
• Forming Disk Galaxies in Lambda CDM Simulations
• The SAURON project -- X. The orbital anisotropy of elliptical and lenticular galaxies: revisiting the (V/sigma,epsilon) diagram with integral-field stellar kinematics
• How Do Disks Survive Mergers?
• Simulating galactic outflows with thermal supernova feedback
• A Merger-Driven Scenario for Cosmological Disk Galaxy Formation
• Dark Matter Halos within Clusters
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: instrument specification and target selection
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: public release of halo and galaxy catalogues
• The stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation: growth by mergers and the spatial distribution of accreted stars
• A Catalog of Detailed Visual Morphological Classifications for 14034 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The optical morphologies of galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation: a comparison to Pan-STARRS observations
• The Atlas3D project - VII. A new look at the morphology of nearby galaxies: the kinematic morphology-density relation
• Formation of a spiral galaxy in a major merger
• Quantifying the Fragility of Galactic Disks in Minor Mergers
• Statistical Properties of Collisionless Equal- and Unequal-Mass Merger Remnants of Disk Galaxies
• On the Survival and Destruction of Spiral Galaxies in Clusters
• The Atlas3D project -- XIII. Mass and morphology of HI in early-type galaxies as a function of environment
• Evolution of galaxy stellar masses and star formation rates in the EAGLE simulations
• The Morphology - Density Relation in z ~ 1 Clusters
• A wide field Hubble Space Telescope study of the cluster CL0024+16 at z=0.4. I: morphological distributions to 5 Mpc radius
• Passive spiral formation from halo gas starvation: Gradual transformation into S0s
• The evolution of the galactic morphological types in clusters
• Morphological studies of the galaxy populations in distant "Butcher-Oemler" clusters with HST. II. AC103, AC118 and AC114 at z=0.31
• The dark nemesis of galaxy formation: why hot haloes trigger black hole growth and bring star formation to an end
• The impact of angular momentum on black hole accretion rates in simulations of galaxy formation
• Halpha Morphologies and Environmental Effects in Virgo Cluster Spiral Galaxies
• Colours and luminosities of z=0.1 simulated galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• The Cluster-EAGLE project: global properties of simulated clusters with resolved galaxies
• The Hydrangea simulations: galaxy formation in and around massive clusters
• WALLABY -- An SKA Pathfinder HI Survey
• Evolution Since z=1 of the Morphology-density Relation of Galaxies
• Size evolution of normal and compact galaxies in the EAGLE simulation
• Unequal-mass galaxy mergers and the creation of cluster S0 galaxies
• Bimodality of low-redshift circumgalactic O VI in non-equilibrium EAGLE zoom simulations
• Galaxy Morphology and Star Formation in the Illustris Simulation at z=0
• Ram pressure stripping of halo gas in disk galaxies: Implications on galactic star formation in different environments
• Optical colours and spectral indices of $z=0.1$ EAGLE galaxies with 3D dust radiative transfer code SKIRT
• A chronicle of galaxy mass assembly in the EAGLE simulation
• Morphology and star formation in IllustrisTNG: the build-up of spheroids and discs
• N-body Dark Matter Haloes with simple Hierarchical Histories
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the link between angular momentum and optical morphology
• The quenching and morphological evolution of central galaxies is facilitated by the feedback-driven expulsion of circumgalactic gas
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Galaxy close-pairs, mergers, and the future fate of stellar mass
• The EAGLE simulations: atomic hydrogen associated with galaxies
• Quantifying the impact of mergers on the angular momentum of simulated galaxies
• Ram pressure feeding super-massive black holes
• Transformation from spirals into S0s with bulge growth in groups of galaxies
• The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation
• Using transfer learning to detect galaxy mergers
• Supermassive black holes and their host spheroids II. The red and blue sequence in the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-M_{\ast ,\mathrm{sph}}$ diagram
• Massive Star Formation Rates and Radial Distributions from Halpha Imaging of 84 Virgo Cluster and Isolated Spiral Galaxies
• Deep learning predictions of galaxy merger stage and the importance of observational realism
• The ATLAS3D Project-- VIII: Modelling the Formation and Evolution of Fast and Slow Rotator Early-Type Galaxies within $\Lambda$CDM
• The environmental dependence of HI in galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• The gas fractions of dark matter haloes hosting simulated $\sim L^{\star }$ galaxies are governed by the feedback history of their black holes
• Energy equipartition between stellar and dark matter particles in cosmological simulations results in spurious growth of galaxy sizes
• The relation between galaxy morphology and colour in the EAGLE simulation
• The connection between mass, environment and slow rotation in simulated galaxies
• The Evolution of the Field and Cluster Morphology-Density Relation for Mass-Selected Samples of Galaxies
• Galaxies in the Illustris simulation as seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - II: Size-luminosity relations and the deficit of bulge-dominated galaxies in Illustris at low mass
• The Hubble Sequence at $z\sim 0$ in the IllustrisTNG simulation with deep learning
• The three phases of galaxy formation
• The relationship between the morphology and kinematics of galaxies and its dependence on dark matter halo structure in EAGLE
• Deep Convolutional Neural Networks as strong gravitational lens detectors
• The Physical Origins of The Morphology-Density Relation: Evidence for Gas Stripping from the SDSS
• On the interdependence of galaxy morphology, star formation, and environment in massive galaxies in the nearby Universe
• Galaxy mergers in EAGLE do not induce a significant amount of black hole growth yet do increase the rate of luminous AGN
• Feedback from supermassive black holes transforms centrals into passive galaxies by ejecting circumgalactic gas
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: The Formation Sequence of S0 Galaxies
• An EAGLE's View of Ex-situ Galaxy Growth
• Formation of S0 galaxies through mergers. V. Antitruncated stellar discs resulting from major mergers
• Formation of S0 galaxies through mergers: Explaining angular momentum and concentration change from spirals to S0s
• Fast and slow rotators in the densest environments: a FLAMES/GIRAFFE IFS study of galaxies in Abell 1689 at z=0.183
• Morphological Fractions of Galaxies in WINGS Clusters: revisiting the Morphology-Density Paradigm
• Galaxy mergers moulding the circum-galactic medium - I. The impact of a major merger
• Detection of Bars in Galaxies using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network
• The CALIFA view on stellar angular momentum across the Hubble sequence
• Morphological classification of galaxies with deep learning: comparing 3-way and 4-way CNNs
• The star formation rate and stellar content contributions of morphological components in the EAGLE simulations
• Fast and Slow Rotators in the Densest Environments: a SWIFT IFS study of the Coma Cluster
• Formation of S0 galaxies through mergers. Evolution in the Tully-Fisher relation since $z\sim 1$
• The diverse nature and formation paths of slow rotator galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• A Link Between Ram Pressure Stripping and Active Galactic Nuclei
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: A Range in S0 Properties Indicating Multiple Formation Pathways
• The origin of the red sequence galaxy population in the EAGLE simulation
• The two formation pathways of S0 galaxies
• Observations of metals in the $z\approx 3.5$ intergalactic medium and comparison to the EAGLE simulations
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Mass and Environment as Independent Drivers of Galaxy Dynamics
• Formation of S0s via disc accretion around high-redshift compact ellipticals
• Non-parametric Morphologies of Galaxies in the EAGLE Simulation
• Formation of S0s in extreme environments I: clues from kinematics and stellar populations
• Evolution along the sequence of S0 Hubble types induced by dry minor mergers. I - Global bulge-to-disk structural relations
• The evolution of barred galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• WALLABY Pilot Survey: HI gas disc truncation and star formation of galaxies falling into the Hydra I cluster
• Evolution along the sequence of S0 Hubble types induced by dry minor mergers. II - Bulge-disk coupling in the photometric relations through merger-induced internal secular evolution
• The SLUGGS survey: combining stars, globular clusters and planetary nebulae to understand the assembly history of early-type galaxies from their large radii kinematics
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: The role of disc fading and progenitor bias in kinematic transitions
• Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam revisits the large-scale environmental dependence on galaxy morphology over 360 deg${}^2$ at z=0.3-0.6
• The age gradients of galaxies in EAGLE: outside-in quenching as the origin of young bulges in cluster galaxies

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Morphologies of galaxies within voids
• The Most Massive Early-type Galaxies Exhibit Tidal Features More Frequently in Lower-density Environments
• Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): First Data Release Covering The D10 (COSMOS) Region
• GalaxyGenius: Mock galaxy image generator for various telescopes from hydrodynamical simulations
• Stellar-gas kinematic misalignments in EAGLE: lifetimes and longevity of misaligned galaxies
• Investigating the relation between environment and internal structure of massive elliptical galaxies using strong lensing
• Gamma Analytical Modeling Evolution (GAME) I: The physical implications of deriving the stellar mass functions from z=0 to z=8
• The Complex Structure of the Abell 548 - Abell 3367 Region