Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2010-04-02
van der Wel et al. 2010, ApJ, 714, 1779
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
published in ApJ: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...714.1779V
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/714/2/1779
We provide a physical interpretation and explanation of the morphology-density relation for galaxies, drawing on stellar masses, star formation rates, axis ratios and group halo masses from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We first re-cast the classical morphology-density relation in more quantitative terms, using low star formation rate (quiescence) as a proxy for early-type morphology and dark matter halo mass from a group catalog as a proxy for environmental density: for galaxies of a given stellar mass the quiescent fraction is found to increase with increasing dark matter halo mass. Our novel result is that - at a given stellar mass - quiescent galaxies are significantly flatter in dense environments, implying a higher fraction of disk galaxies. Supposing that the denser environments differ simply by a higher incidence of quiescent disk galaxies that are structurally similar to star-forming disk galaxies of similar mass, explains simultaneously and quantitatively these quiescence -nvironment and shape-environment relations. Our findings add considerable weight to the slow removal of gas as the main physical driver of the morphology-density relation, at the expense of other explanations.
Bell Eric F.
Hans-Walter-Rix
Holden Bradford P.
Skibba Ramin A.
van der Wel Arjen
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