Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies: IV. A nature via nurture scenario for galaxy evolution

Abstract

We investigate the environmental dependence of stellar population properties of galaxies in the local universe. Physical quantities related to the stellar content of galaxies are derived from a spectral synthesis method applied to a volume-limited sample containing more than 60 thousand galaxies extracted from the DR4 of the SDSS. Mean stellar ages, mean stellar metallicities and stellar masses are obtained from this method and used to characterise the stellar populations of galaxies. The environment is defined by the projected local galaxy density estimated from a nearest neighbour approach. We recover the star formation--density relation in terms of the mean light-weighted stellar age, which is strongly correlated with star formation parameters derived from \Ha. We find that the age--density relation is distinct when we divide galaxies according to luminosity or stellar mass. The relation is remarkable for galaxies in all bins of luminosity. On the other hand, only for an intermediate stellar mass interval (associated to a transition in galaxy properties) the relation shows a change in galaxy properties with environment. Such distinct behaviours are associated to the large stellar masses of galaxies with the same luminosity in high-density environments. In addition, the well known star formation--density relation results from the prevalence of massive systems in high-density environments, independently of galaxy luminosity, with the additional observed downsizing in galaxy formation, in which the star formation is shifted from massive galaxies at early times to low-mass galaxies as the universe evolves. Our results support that a natural path for galaxy evolution proceeds via a nurture way, in the sense that galaxy evolution is accelerated in denser environments, that took place mainly at high-redshifts.

arXiv comment17 pages, 13 figures, revised version accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (62)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• Star Formation in Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Main Galaxy Sample
• The epochs of early-type galaxy formation as a function of environment
• New Insight on Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Keck Spectroscopy of the Hawaii Deep Fields
• Color Separation of Galaxy Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
• The Environmental Dependence of the Relations between Stellar Mass, Structure, Star Formation and Nuclear Activity in Galaxies
• The Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The formation history of elliptical galaxies
• Differential Galaxy Evolution in Cluster and Field Galaxies at z=0.3
• Galaxy Star-Formation as a Function of Environment in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Broad-band Optical Properties of Galaxies with Redshifts 0.0 < z < 0.2
• The Star Formation Histories of Galaxies in Distant Clusters
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The environmental dependence of galaxy star formation rates near clusters
• The bimodal galaxy color distribution: dependence on luminosity and environment
• The Mass Assembly History of Field Galaxies: Detection of an Evolving Mass Limit for Star Forming Galaxies
• An Efficient Algorithm for Positioning Tiles in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Spectroscopic Catalog of 10 Distant Rich Clusters of Galaxies
• Estimating Fixed Frame Galaxy Magnitudes in the SDSS
• Star Formation Thresholds in Galactic Disks
• The Complete Star Formation History of the Universe
• Ram pressure stripping and galaxy orbits: The case of the Virgo cluster
• Star formation rate indicators in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: III. The abundance of massive galaxies 3-6 billion years after the Big Bang
• Cosmic Star Formation History and its Dependence on Galaxy Stellar Mass
• Early Metal Enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium by Pregalactic Outflows
• The evolution of the star formation activity in galaxies and its dependence on environment
• The C4 Clustering Algorithm: Clusters of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Environment of AGNs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Nature of Compact Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field (II): Spectroscopic Properties and Implications for the Evolution of the Star Formation Rate Density of the Universe
• The Influence of Environment on the Star Formation Rates of Galaxies
• Aperture effects on Star Formation Rate, Metallicity and Reddening
• Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies: II. The bimodality of the galaxy population revisited
• The Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties in the Local Universe: Dependence on Luminosity, Local Density, and System Richness
• The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation as a Function of Environment
• Spectroscopic Identification of a Proto-Cluster at z=2.300: Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties at High Redshift
• Effects of Ram-Pressure from Intracluster Medium on the Star Formation Rate of Disk Galaxies in Clusters of Galaxies
• VLA HI imaging of the brightest spiral galaxies in Coma
• Down-Sizing in Galaxy Formation at z~1 in the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS)
• Early Enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium and its Feedback on Galaxy Formation
• Measuring Galaxy Environments with Deep Redshift Surveys
• Galaxy Clustering and Galaxy Bias in a Lambda-CDM Universe
• The evolution of the galaxy distribution
• The Environment of Passive Spiral Galaxies in the SDSS
• The Nature of E+A Galaxies in Intermediate Redshift Clusters
• AGN Feedback Causes Downsizing
• The star formation history of early-type galaxies as a function of mass and environment
• CAIRNS: The Cluster And Infall Region Nearby Survey III. Environmental Dependence of H-alpha Properties of Galaxies
• The HI Content of Spirals. I. Field-Galaxy HI Mass Functions and HI Mass-Optical Size Regression
• Bimodal Color Distribution in Hierarchical Galaxy Formation
• Composite Luminosity Functions Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey "Cut & Enhance" Galaxy Cluster Catalog
• Star Formation in a Complete Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies
• Baryonic Conversion Tree: The global assembly of stars and dark matter in galaxies from the SDSS
• Discovery of Massive Evolved Galaxies at z > 3 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Light to Mass Variations with Environment
• Tidal truncation of gas replenishment and global suppression of galactic star formation in distant clusters
• Global regularities in integrated galaxy spectra
• Toward Understanding Environmental Effects in SDSS Clusters
• Star formation and the environment of nearby field galaxies

Cited by in corpus (30)

• The history of star-forming galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Mass-Metallicity relation explored with CALIFA: I. Is there a dependence on the star formation rate?
• Tracking the impact of environment on the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function up to z~1 in the 10k zCOSMOS sample
• The star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Radial structures
• The Cosmic Evolution of Metallicity from the SDSS Fossil Record
• The Different Physical Mechanisms that Drive the Star-Formation Histories of Giant and Dwarf Galaxies
• The PyCASSO database: Spatially resolved stellar population properties for CALIFA galaxies
• The Rapid Build-up of Massive Early-type Galaxies. Supersolar Metallicity, High Velocity Dispersion and Young Age for an ETG at z=3.35
• The miniJPAS survey: Identification and characterization of galaxy populations with the J-PAS photometric system
• The history of star formation and mass assembly in early-type galaxies
• The Environment of Galaxies at Low Redshift
• The nature of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies in various classes based on morphology, colour and spectral features - III. Environments
• Galaxy populations in massive z=0.2-0.9 clusters: I. Analysis of spectroscopy
• The red and blue galaxy populations in the GOODS field: evidence for an excess of red dwarfs
• Recent Star-Forming Activity in Local Elliptical Galaxies
• Spatially resolved spectroscopy and chemical history of star-forming galaxies in the Hercules cluster: the effects of the environment
• Why do many early-type galaxies lack emission lines? I. Fossil clues
• Evolution of Group Galaxies from the First Red-Sequence Cluster Survey
• Loss of star forming gas in SDSS galaxies
• Age, metallicity and star formation history of spheroidal galaxies in cluster at z~1.2
• The nature of extremely red galaxies in the local universe
• Spatially resolved analysis of Superluminous Supernovae PTF~11hrq and PTF~12dam host galaxies
• Stellar populations in superclusters of galaxies
• The miniJPAS survey: The galaxy populations in the most massive cluster in miniJPAS, mJPC2470-1771
• The scale dependence of mass assembly in galaxies
• Ridges in the Dark Energy Survey for cosmic trough identification
• A New Perspective on the Large-Scale Tidal Effect on the Galaxy Luminosity and Morphology
• Binary interactions on the calibrations of star formation rate
• Two spectroscopically confirmed galaxy structures at z=0.61 and 0.74 in the CFHTLS Deep~3 field
• A group of merging galaxies falling onto Abell 2142