English

Stellar mass function of cluster galaxies at z $\sim$ 1.5: evidence for reduced quenching efficiency at high redshift

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2016-08-24 v1

Abstract

We present the stellar mass functions (SMFs) of passive and star-forming galaxies with a limiting mass of 1010.1^{10.1} M_{\odot} in four spectroscopically confirmed Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (SpARCS) galaxy clusters at 1.37 << z << 1.63. The clusters have 113 spectroscopically confirmed members combined, with 8-45 confirmed members each. We construct KsKs-band-selected photometric catalogs for each cluster with an average of 11 photometric bands ranging from uu to 8 μ\mum. We compare our cluster galaxies to a field sample derived from a similar KsKs-band-selected catalog in the UltraVISTA/COSMOS field. The SMFs resemble those of the field, but with signs of environmental quenching. We find that 30 ±\pm 20\% of galaxies that would normally be forming stars in the field are quenched in the clusters. The environmental quenching efficiency shows little dependence on projected cluster-centric distance out to \sim 4 Mpc, providing tentative evidence of pre-processing and/or galactic conformity in this redshift range. We also compile the available data on environmental quenching efficiencies from the literature, and find that the quenching efficiency in clusters and in groups appears to decline with increasing redshift in a manner consistent with previous results and expectations based on halo mass growth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.07832,
  title  = {Stellar mass function of cluster galaxies at z $\sim$ 1.5: evidence for reduced quenching efficiency at high redshift},
  author = {Julie B. Nantais and Remco F. J. van der Burg and Chris Lidman and Ricardo Demarco and Allison Noble and Gillian Wilson and Adam Muzzin and Ryan Foltz and Andrew DeGroot and Mike Cooper},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.07832},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pages, 8 figures, accepted to A&A