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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - A comparative study of density field estimation for galaxies
T2 - New insights into the evolution of galaxies with environment in cosmos out to Z ∼ 3
AU - Darvish, Behnam
AU - Mobasher, Bahram
AU - Sobral, David
AU - Scoville, Nicholas
AU - Aragon-Calvo, Miguel
PY - 2015/6/1
Y1 - 2015/6/1
N2 - It is well-known that a galaxy's environment has a fundamental influence in shaping its properties. We study the environmental effects on galaxy evolution, with an emphasis on the environment defined as the local number density of galaxies. The density field is estimated with different estimators (weighted adaptive kernel smoothing, 10th and 5th nearest neighbors, Voronoi and Delaunay tessellation) for a Ks < 24 sample of ∼190,000 galaxies in the COSMOS field at 0.1 < z < 3.1. The performance of each estimator is evaluated with extensive simulations. We show that overall there is a good agreement between the estimated density fields using different methods over ∼2 dex in overdensity values. However, our simulations show that adaptive kernel and Voronoi tessellation outperform other methods. Using the Voronoi tessellation method, we assign surface densities to a mass complete sample of quiescent and star-forming galaxies out to z ∼ 3. We show that at a fixed stellar mass, the median color of quiescent galaxies does not depend on their host environment out to z ∼ 3. We find that the number and stellar mass density of massive (>1011) star-forming galaxies have not significantly changed since z ∼ 3, regardless of their environment. However, for massive quiescent systems at lower redshifts (z ≲ 1.3), we find a significant evolution in the number and stellar mass densities in denser environments compared to lower density regions. Our results suggest that the relation between stellar mass and local density is more fundamental than the color-density relation and that environment plays a significant role in quenching star-formation activity in galaxies at z ≲ 1.
AB - It is well-known that a galaxy's environment has a fundamental influence in shaping its properties. We study the environmental effects on galaxy evolution, with an emphasis on the environment defined as the local number density of galaxies. The density field is estimated with different estimators (weighted adaptive kernel smoothing, 10th and 5th nearest neighbors, Voronoi and Delaunay tessellation) for a Ks < 24 sample of ∼190,000 galaxies in the COSMOS field at 0.1 < z < 3.1. The performance of each estimator is evaluated with extensive simulations. We show that overall there is a good agreement between the estimated density fields using different methods over ∼2 dex in overdensity values. However, our simulations show that adaptive kernel and Voronoi tessellation outperform other methods. Using the Voronoi tessellation method, we assign surface densities to a mass complete sample of quiescent and star-forming galaxies out to z ∼ 3. We show that at a fixed stellar mass, the median color of quiescent galaxies does not depend on their host environment out to z ∼ 3. We find that the number and stellar mass density of massive (>1011) star-forming galaxies have not significantly changed since z ∼ 3, regardless of their environment. However, for massive quiescent systems at lower redshifts (z ≲ 1.3), we find a significant evolution in the number and stellar mass densities in denser environments compared to lower density regions. Our results suggest that the relation between stellar mass and local density is more fundamental than the color-density relation and that environment plays a significant role in quenching star-formation activity in galaxies at z ≲ 1.
KW - galaxies: evolution
KW - large-scale structure of universe
KW - methods: data analysis Supporting material: machine-readable table
U2 - 10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/121
DO - 10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/121
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84934880991
VL - 805
JO - The Astrophysical Journal
JF - The Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 2
M1 - 121
ER -