The Environments of Star-Forming Galaxies Detected in the SFACT Survey: Do Mergers and Interactions Drive the Star Formation?

Abstract

We conduct an environmental analysis around 167 star-forming galaxies (SFGs) detected by the Star Formation Across Cosmic Time (SFACT) survey over the redshift range 0.129 $\le$ z $\le$ 0.500. We use three environmental estimators to characterize the local galactic environments around the SFACT SFGs, on the scales of 100 kpc to several Mpc. We categorize these environments based on the relative clustering strength with respect to a deep environment comparison redshift sample. The SFACT SFGs tend to be less clustered than the environment comparison sample (ECS), with no significant change in relative clustering strengths over our redshift range. We find that any trends with the star-formation rates (SFRs) of the SFACT galaxies and their environments are likely related to their absolute magnitudes, a proxy for mass. Mergers and interactions with other luminous galaxies do not appear to be the primary driver of the star-formation activity seen within the SFACT SFGs.

44 pages, 27 figures

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