English

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Environment-dependent galaxy stellar mass functions in the low-redshift Universe

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-03-28 v1

Abstract

From a carefully selected sample of 5208952\,089 galaxies and 1042910\,429 groups, we investigate the variation of the low-redshift galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) in the equatorial Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) dataset as a function of four different environmental properties. We find that: (i) The GSMF is not strongly affected by distance to the nearest filament but rather by group membership. (ii) More massive halos tend to host more massive galaxies and exhibit a steeper decline with stellar mass in the number of intermediate-mass galaxies. This result is robust against the choice of dynamical and luminosity-based group halo mass estimates. (iii) The GSMF of group galaxies does not depend on the position within a filament, but for groups outside of filaments, the characteristic mass of the GSMF is lower. Finally, our global GSMF is well described by a double Schechter function with the following parameters: log[M/(Mh702)]=10.76±0.01\log [M^{\star} / (M_{\odot} \, h_{70}^{-2})] = 10.76 \pm 0.01, Φ1=(3.75±0.09)×103\Phi_1^{\star} = (3.75 \pm 0.09) \times 10^{-3} Mpc3^{-3} h703h_{70}^3, α1=0.86±0.03\alpha_{1} = -0.86 \pm 0.03, Φ2=(0.13±0.05)×103\Phi_2^{\star} = (0.13 \pm 0.05) \times 10^{-3} Mpc3^{-3} h703h_{70}^3, and α2=1.71±0.06\alpha_{2} = -1.71 \pm 0.06. This result is consistent with previous GAMA studies in terms of MM^{\star}, although we find lower values for both α1\alpha_{1} and α2\alpha_{2}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.21363,
  title  = {Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Environment-dependent galaxy stellar mass functions in the low-redshift Universe},
  author = {A. Sbaffoni and J. Liske and S. P. Driver and A. S. G. Robotham and E. N. Taylor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.21363},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages, 10 tables and 19 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)