English

Cluster candidates with massive quiescent galaxies at $z\sim2$

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-04-22 v2

Abstract

Galaxy clusters are crucial to understanding role of the environment in galaxy evolution. However, due to their rarity, only a limited number of clusters have been identified at z2z\gtrsim2. In this paper, we report a discovery of seven cluster candidates with massive quiescent galaxies at z2z\sim2 in the 3.5deg23.5\,\mathrm{deg}^{2} area of the XMM-LSS field, roughly doubling the known cluster sample at this frontier redshift if confirmed. We construct a photometric redshift catalog based on deep (i26i\sim26, Ks24K_\mathrm{s}\sim24) multi-wavelength photometry from uu^*-band to KK-band gathered from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program and other collaborative/public surveys. We adopt a Gaussian kernel density estimate with two different spatial scales (10" and 60") to draw a density map of massive (log(M/M)>10.5\log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})>10.5) and quiescent (log(sSFR[yr1])<10\log(\mathrm{sSFR\, [\mathrm{yr^{-1}}]})<-10) galaxies at z2z\sim2. Then, We identify seven prominent overdensities. These candidates show clear red sequences in color-magnitude diagrams (zHz-H vs. HH). Moreover, one of them shows an extended X-ray emission with LX=(1.46±0.35)×1044L_\mathrm{X}=(1.46\pm0.35)\times10^{44} erg s1^{-1}, suggesting its virialized nature. There is no clear evidence of enhancement nor suppression of the star formation rate of the main sequence galaxies in the clusters. We find that cluster galaxies have a higher fraction of transition population with 10.5<log(sSFR[yr1])<10-10.5<\log(\mathrm{sSFR\, [\mathrm{yr^{-1}}]})<-10 (12%12\%) than the field (2%2\%), which implies the ongoing star formation quenching. The quiescent fraction in the cluster candidates also exceeds that in the field. We confirm that the excess of a quiescent fraction is larger for higher-mass galaxies. This is the first statistical evidence for the mass-dependent environmental quenching at work in clusters even at z2z\sim2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.02849,
  title  = {Cluster candidates with massive quiescent galaxies at $z\sim2$},
  author = {Tomokazu Kiyota and Makoto Ando and Masayuki Tanaka and Alexis Finoguenov and Sadman Shariar Ali and Jean Coupon and Guillaume Desprez and Stephen Gwyn and Marcin Sawicki and Rhythm Shimakawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.02849},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 9 figures, published in The Astrophysical Journal, 980, 104