Galaxy Evolution in the Environment of ABCG 209
Abstract
We examine the environmental effects on the photometric properties of galaxies for the rich galaxy cluster ABCG 209 at z=0.209. We use archive CFHT optical imaging of a 42'x28' field centred on the cluster to produce a galaxy sample complete to B=25.0 and R=24.5. Both the composite and red sequence galaxy luminosity functions are found to be dependent on the local galaxy surface density, their faint-end slopes becoming shallower with increasing density. We explain this as a combination of the morphology-density relation, and dwarf galaxies being cannibalised and/or disrupted by the cD galaxy and the ICM in the cluster core. The B-R colour of the red sequence itself appears 0.02mag redder for the highest-density regions, indicative of their stellar populations being marginally (<5%) older or (<20%) more metal-rich. This may be due to the galaxies themselves forming earliest in the rarest overdensities marked by rich clusters, or their star-formation being suppressed earliest by the ICM.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0403556,
title = {Galaxy Evolution in the Environment of ABCG 209},
author = {C. P. Haines and A. Mercurio and P. Merluzzi and F. La Barbera and M. Massarotti and G. Busarello and M. Girardi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0403556},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&A with minor revisions