The evolution of the bi-modal colour distribution of galaxies in SDSS groups

Abstract

We analyse $u-r$ colour distributions for several samples of galaxies in groups drawn from the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For all luminosity ranges and environments considered the colour distributions are well described by the sum of two Gaussian functions. We find that the fraction of galaxies in the red sequence is an increasing function of group virial mass. We also study the evolution of the galaxy colour distributions at low redshift, $z\le 0.18$ in the field and in groups for galaxies brighter than $M_r-5\log (h)=-20$, finding significant evidence of recent evolution in the population of galaxies in groups. The fraction of red galaxies monotonically increases with decreasing redshift, this effect implies a much stronger evolution of galaxies in groups than in the field.

arXiv comment7 pages, 6 figures, submited to MNRAS after minor revision

References in corpus (40)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• The physical properties of star forming galaxies in the low redshift universe
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectra and redshifts
• Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Main Galaxy Sample
• Galaxy Harassment and the Evolution of Clusters of Galaxies
• 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
• Nearly 5000 Distant Early-Type Galaxies in COMBO-17: a Red Sequence and its Evolution since z~1
• The Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Evolution since z = 0.5 of the Morphology-Density relation for Clusters of Galaxies
• Galaxy Star-Formation as a Function of Environment in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Origin of Star Formation Gradients in Rich Galaxy Clusters
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The environmental dependence of galaxy star formation rates near clusters
• Properties of Galaxy Groups in the SDSS: I.-- The Dependence of Colour, Star Formation, and Morphology on Halo Mass
• The bimodal galaxy color distribution: dependence on luminosity and environment
• Estimating Fixed Frame Galaxy Magnitudes in the SDSS
• Galaxy ecology: groups and low-density environments in the SDSS and 2dFGRS
• A Halo-Based Galaxy Group Finder: Calibration and Application to the 2dFGRS
• Galaxy groups in the 2dFGRS: the group-finding algorithm and the 2PIGG catalogue
• 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 Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: morphological classification and bimodality in the colour-concentration plane
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: Bulge/Disc Decomposition of 10095 Nearby Galaxies
• The Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties in the Local Universe: Dependence on Luminosity, Local Density, and System Richness
• Early-type galaxies in the SDSS. IV. Colors and chemical evolution
• The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation as a Function of Environment
• Galaxy Occupation Statistics of Dark Matter Haloes: Observational Results
• Galaxy Groups in the SDSS-DR3
• Galaxy groups in the 2dF redshift survey: The catalogue
• Galaxy Groups at Intermediate Redshift
• The Butcher-Oemler Effect in 295 Clusters: Strong Redshift Evolution and Cluster Richness Dependence
• Galaxy Groups at 0.3 <= z <= 0.55. II. Evolution to z ~ 0
• Photometric Properties of 47 Clusters of Galaxies: I. The Butcher-Oemler Effect
• Galaxy groups in the 2dF redshift survey: Effects of Environment on Star Formation
• Evolution of the Colour--Radius Relation and the Morphology--Radius Relation in the SDSS Galaxy Clusters
• Galaxy groups in the 2dF redshift survey: Galaxy Spectral Type Segregation in Groups
• Groups of galaxies: relationship between environment and galaxy properties

Cited by in corpus (13)

• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: II. Formation of Red Ellipticals
• The Galaxy Content of SDSS Clusters and Groups
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Evolution of the Color-Density Relation at 0.4 < z < 1.35
• The DEEP2 galaxy redshift survey: the evolution of the blue fraction in groups and the field
• Cluster Galaxies Die Hard
• The cosmic web of the Local Universe: cosmic variance, matter content and its relation to galaxy morphology
• Comparing galaxy populations in compact and loose groups of galaxies
• Evolution of environment dependent galaxy properties in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Counts-in-Cylinders in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with Comparisons to N-body Simulations
• The environmental dependence of the red galaxy sequence
• Bimodality of Galaxy Disk Central Surface Brightness Distribution in the Spitzer 3.6 micron band
• The double galaxy cluster Abell 2465 - II. Star formation in the cluster
• Galaxy disc central surface brightness distribution in the optical and near-infrared bands