Modelling the photometric and morphological evolution of disc galaxies in the cluster environment

Abstract

Observations indicate that the disc population in galaxy clusters has undergone rapid evolution, transitioning from a dominance of blue spirals to red S0s over the past $\sim 7$ Gyr. We build a simplified cluster evolutionary model in the $\Lambda$CDM framework to constrain the characteristic timescales of this transformation. In our model, field spirals joining the cluster are subject to ram-pressure stripping (RPS), which removes their gas reservoir leading to the quenching of their star formation on a timescale $t_{\mathrm{s}}$, and to an (initially) unspecified mechanism that transforms them into S0s on a timescale $t_{\mathrm{m}}$. We assume that $t_{\mathrm{s}}$ and $t_{\mathrm{m}}$ are independent and both power-law functions of $M_{\star }/M_{\mathrm{cl}}$, the galaxy-to-cluster mass ratio. We constrain our model using the observed distribution of spirals and S0s in a color-mass plane from the OmegaWINGS and EDisCS cluster surveys at $z\simeq 0.055$ and $z\simeq 0.7$. Our best-fit model reproduces the data remarkably well and predicts evolutionary trends for the main morphological fractions in agreement with previous studies. We find typical $t_{\mathrm{s}}$ between $0.1$ and $1$ Gyr, compatible with previous estimates. A surprisingly strong anti-correlation between $t_{\mathrm{s}}$ and $M_{\star }/M_{\mathrm{cl}}$ is required in order to suppress the formation of red, low-mass spirals at low redshift, which we interpret as driven by orbit anisotropy. Conversely, $t_{\mathrm{m}}$ depends very weakly on $M_{\star }/M_{\mathrm{cl}}$ and has typical values of a few Gyr. The inferred morphological evolution is compatible with that resulting from the ageing of the stellar populations in galaxies abruptly quenched by ram pressure stripping: we confirm spectrophotometric ageing as a key channel for the spiral-to-S0 transition in galaxy clusters, with secular evolution playing a secondary role.

16 pages, 11 Figures, 2 Tables. Accepted by A&A

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