The Evolution of the Field and Cluster Morphology-Density Relation for Mass-Selected Samples of Galaxies
Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and photometric/spectroscopic surveys in the GOODS-South field (the Chandra Deep Field-South, CDFS) are used to construct volume-limited, stellar mass-selected samples of galaxies at redshifts 0<z<1. The CDFS sample at 0.6<z<1.0 contains 207 galaxies complete down to M=4x10^10 Msol (for a ``diet'' Salpeter IMF), corresponding to a luminosity limit for red galaxies of M_B=-20.1. The SDSS sample at 0.020<z<0.045 contains 2003 galaxies down to the same mass limit, which corresponds to M_B=-19.3 for red galaxies. Morphologies are determined with an automated method, using the Sersic parameter n and a measure of the residual from the model fits, called ``bumpiness'', to distinguish different morphologies. These classifications are verified with visual classifications. In agreement with previous studies, 65-70% of the galaxies are located on the red sequence, both at z~0.03 and at z~0.8. Similarly, 65-70% of the galaxies have n>2.5. The fraction of E+S0 galaxies is 43+/-3%$ at z~0.03 and 48+/-7% at z~0.8, i.e., it has not changed significantly since z~0.8. When combined with recent results for cluster galaxies in the same redshift range, we find that the morphology-density relation for galaxies more massive than 0.5M* has remained constant since at least z~0.8. This implies that galaxies evolve in mass, morphology and density such that the morphology-density relation does not change. In particular, the decline of star formation activity and the accompanying increase in the stellar mass density of red galaxies since z~1 must happen without large changes in the early-type galaxy fraction in a given environment.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0707.2787,
title = {The Evolution of the Field and Cluster Morphology-Density Relation for Mass-Selected Samples of Galaxies},
author = {A. van der Wel and B. P. Holden and M. Franx and G. D. Illingworth and M. P. Postman and D. D. Kelson and I. Labbe and S. Wuyts and J. P. Blakeslee and H. C. Ford},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0707.2787},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
16 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Updated to match journal version. Will appear in ApJ (vol. 670, p. 206)