Distribution Of Galaxies In Groups Research Articles

EVOLUTION IN THE H I GAS CONTENT OF GALAXY GROUPS: PRE-PROCESSING AND MASS ASSEMBLY IN THE CURRENT EPOCH

We present an analysis of the neutral hydrogen (HI) content and distribution of galaxies in groups as a function of their parent dark matter halo mass. The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey alpha.40 data release allows us, for the first time, to study the HI properties of over 740 galaxy groups in the volume of sky common to the SDSS and ALFALFA surveys. We assigned ALFALFA HI detections a group membership based on an existing magnitude/volume-limited SDSS DR7 group/cluster catalog. Additionally, we assigned group "proximity" membership to HI detected objects whose optical counterpart falls below the limiting optical magnitude--thereby not contributing substantially to the estimate of the group stellar mass, but significantly to the total group HI mass. We find that only 25% of the HI detected galaxies reside in groups or clusters, in contrast to approximately half of all optically detected galaxies. Further, we plot the relative positions of optical and HI detections in groups as a function of parent dark matter halo mass to reveal strong evidence that HI is being processed in galaxies as a result of the group environment: as optical membership increases, groups become increasingly deficient of HI rich galaxies at their center and the HI distribution of galaxies in the most massive groups starts to resemble the distribution observed in comparatively more extreme cluster environments. We find that the lowest HI mass objects lose their gas first as they are processed in the group environment, and it is evident that the infall of gas rich objects is important to the continuing growth of large scale structure at the present epoch, replenishing the neutral gas supply of groups. Finally, we compare our results to those of cosmological simulations and find that current models cannot simultaneously predict the HI selected halo occupation distribution for both low and high mass halos.

Groups in the Millennium Simulation and in SDSS DR7

The Millennium N-body simulation and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey seventh data release (SDSS DR7) galaxy and galaxy group catalogues are compared to study the properties of galaxy groups and the distribution of galaxies in groups. We construct mock galaxy group catalogues for a Millennium semi-analytical galaxy catalogue by using the same friends-of-friends method, which was used by Tago et al to analyse the SDSS data. We analyse in detail the group luminosities, group richnesses, virial radii, sizes of groups and their rms velocities for four volume-limited samples from observations and simulations. Our results show that the spatial densities of groups agree within one order of magnitude in all samples with a rather good agreement between the mock catalogues and observations. All group property distributions have similar shapes and amplitudes for richer groups. For galaxy pairs and small groups, the group properties for observations and simulations are clearly different. In addition, the spatial distribution of galaxies in small groups is different: at the outskirts of the groups the galaxy number distributions do not agree, although the agreement is relatively good in the inner regions. Differences in the distributions are mainly due to the observational limitations in the SDSS sample and to the problems in the semi-analytical methods that produce too compact and luminous groups.

The radial distribution of galaxies in groups and clusters

We present a new catalogue of 55,121 groups and clusters centred on Luminous Red Galaxies from SDSS DR7 in the redshift range 0.15<z<0.4. We provide halo mass estimates for each of these groups derived from a calibration between the optical richness of bright galaxies (M_r<-20.5) within 1 Mpc, and X-ray-derived mass for a small subset of 129 groups and clusters with X-ray measurements. We derive the mean (stacked) surface number density profiles of galaxies as a function of total halo mass in different mass bins. We find that derived profiles can be well-described by a projected NFW profile with a concentration parameter (<c>~2.6) that is approximately a factor of two lower than that of the dark matter (as predicted by N-body cosmological simulations) and nearly independent of halo mass. Interestingly, in spite of the difference in shape between the galaxy and dark matter radial distributions, both exhibit a high degree of self-similarity. A self-consistent comparison to several recent semi-analytic models of galaxy formation indicates that: (1) beyond ~0.3 r_500 current models are able to reproduce both the shape and normalisation of the satellite profiles; and (2) within ~0.3 r_500 the predicted profiles are sensitive to the details of the satellite-BCG merger timescale calculation. The former is a direct result of the models being tuned to match the global galaxy luminosity function combined with the assumption that the satellite galaxies do not suffer significant tidal stripping, even though their surrounding dark matter haloes can be removed through this process. Combining our results with measurements of the intracluster light should provide a way to inform theoretical models on the efficacy of the tidal stripping and merging processes.

The cross-correlation between galaxies and groups: probing the galaxy distribution in and around dark matter haloes

We determine cross-correlation function between galaxies and galaxy groups, using both the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Groups are identified using the halo-based group finder developed by Yang et al., which is optimized to associate to a group those galaxies which belong to the same dark matter halo. Our galaxy-group cross-correlation function is therefore a surrogate for the galaxy-halo cross-correlation function. We study the cross-correlation as a function of group mass, and as a function of the luminosity, stellar mass, colour, spectral type and specific star formation rate of the galaxies. All these cross-correlation functions show a clear transition from the ‘one-halo’ to the ‘two-halo’ regimes on a scale comparable to the virial radius of the groups under consideration. On scales larger than the virial radius, all cross-correlation functions are roughly parallel, consistent with the linear bias model. In particular, the large-scale correlation amplitudes are higher for more massive groups, and for brighter and redder galaxies. In the ‘one-halo’ regime, the cross-correlation function depends strongly on the definition of the group centre. We consider both a luminosity-weighted centre (LW centre) and a centre defined by the location of the brightest group galaxy (BG centre). With the first definition, the bright early-type galaxies in massive groups are found to be more centrally concentrated than the fainter, late-type galaxies. Using the BG centre, and excluding the brightest galaxy from the cross-correlation analysis, we only find significant segregation in massive groups (M≳ 1013h−1 M⊙) for galaxies of different spectral types (or colours or specific star formation rates). In haloes with masses ≲1013h−1 M⊙, there is a significant deficit of bright satellite galaxies. Comparing the results from the 2dFGRS with those obtained from realistic mock samples, we find that the distribution of galaxies in groups is much less concentrated than dark matter haloes predicted by the current λCDM model.

Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey and Sloan Digital Sky Survey Galaxy Group Density Profiles

We have analyzed the distribution of galaxies in groups identified in the largest redshift surveys available at present: the final release of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and the first release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our work comprises the study of the galaxy density profiles and the fraction of galaxies per spectral type as a function of the groupcentric distance. We have calculated the projected galaxy density profiles of galaxy groups using composite samples in order to increase the statistical significance of the results. Special care has been taken in order to avoid possible biases in the group identification and the construction of the projected galaxy density profile estimator. The results show that the projected galaxy density profiles obtained for both redshift surveys are in agreement with a projected Navarro, Frenk, and White prediction in the range 0.15 < r/r200 < 1, whereas a good fit for the measured profiles in the whole range of r/r200 is given by a projected King profile. We have adopted a generalized King profile to fit the measured projected density profiles per spectral type. In order to infer the three-dimensional galaxy density profiles, we deproject the two-dimensional density profiles using a deprojection method similar to that developed by Allen and Fabian. From two-dimensional and three-dimensional galaxy density profiles, we have estimated the corresponding galaxy fractions per spectral type. The two-dimensional fraction of galaxies computed using the projected profiles shows a similar segregation of galaxy spectral types as that obtained by Domínguez and coworkers for groups in the early data release of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. As expected, the trends obtained for the three-dimensional galaxy fractions show steeper slopes than those observed in the two-dimensional fractions.

Determination of the distribution of galaxies in groups and clusters by correlation analysis

A new method for determining the two-dimensional number density profile in groups and clusters of galaxies is presented and tested. It is based on the use of the distribution of intergalactic projected separations, which can be calculated in a straightforward manner from the positions of galaxies in a plate. After establishing the mathematical foundation and practical implementation of the method, we show its potential by applying it to Monte Carlo clusters with a small number of galaxies. Several questions of interest to the general user are discussed and illustrated with real data. With this new method, reliable number density profiles can be determined for groups and clusters with a small number of galaxies. 21 refs.