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Galaxy and mass assembly (GAMA): The environmental impact on SFR and metallicity in galaxy groups

Sotillo-Ramos, D.; Lara-López, M. A.; Pérez-García, A. M.; Pérez-Martínez, R.; Hopkins, A. M.; Holwerda, B. W.; Liske, J.; López-Sánchez, A. R.; Owers, M. S.; Pimbblet, K. A.

Authors

D. Sotillo-Ramos

M. A. Lara-López

A. M. Pérez-García

R. Pérez-Martínez

A. M. Hopkins

B. W. Holwerda

J. Liske

A. R. López-Sánchez

M. S. Owers



Abstract

We present a study of the relationships and environmental dependencies between stellar mass, star formation rate, and gas metallicity for more than 700 galaxies in groups up to redshift 0.35 from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. To identify the main drivers, our sample was analysed as a function of group-centric distance, projected galaxy number density, and stellar mass. By using control samples of more than 16 000 star-forming field galaxies and volume-limited samples, we find that the highest enhancement in SFR (0.3 dex) occurs in galaxies with the lowest local density. In contrast to previous work, our data show small enhancements of ∼0.1 dex in SFR for galaxies at the highest local densities or group-centric distances. Our data indicates quenching in SFR only for massive galaxies, suggesting that stellar mass might be the main driver of quenching processes for star forming galaxies. We can discard a morphological driven quenching, since the Sérsic index distribution for group and control galaxies are similar. The gas metallicity does not vary drastically. It increases ∼0.08 dex for galaxies at the highest local densities, and decreases for galaxies at the highest group-centric distances, in agreement with previous work. Altogether, the local density, rather than group-centric distance, shows the stronger impact in enhancing both, the SFR and gas metallicity. We applied the same methodology to galaxies from the IllustrisTNG simulations, and although we were able to reproduce the general observational trends, the differences between group and control samples only partially agree with the observations.

Citation

Sotillo-Ramos, D., Lara-López, M. A., Pérez-García, A. M., Pérez-Martínez, R., Hopkins, A. M., Holwerda, B. W., …Pimbblet, K. A. (2021). Galaxy and mass assembly (GAMA): The environmental impact on SFR and metallicity in galaxy groups. Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 508(2), 1817-1830. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2641

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 6, 2021
Online Publication Date Sep 21, 2021
Publication Date Dec 1, 2021
Deposit Date Jan 11, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jan 31, 2022
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 508
Issue 2
Pages 1817-1830
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2641
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3886720

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.







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