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Register a new userHierarchical Evolution in Poor Groups of Galaxies
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Ann I. Zabludoff
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To examine the evidence for hierarchical evolution on mass scales of 10^13-10^14 solar masses, we apply a statistic that measures correlations between galaxy velocity and projected position (Dressler & Shectman 1988) to data for six poor groups of galaxies, HCG 42, HCG 62, NGC 533, NGC 2563, NGC 5129, and NGC 741. Each group has more than 30 identified members (Zabludoff & Mulchaey 1998ab). The statistic is sensitive to clumps of galaxies on the sky whose mean velocity and velocity dispersion deviate from the kinematics of the group as a whole. The kinematics of galaxies within about 0.1 Mpc of the group center do not deviate from the global values, supporting our earlier claim that the group cores are close to virialization or virialized. We detect significant substructure (at 99.9% confidence) in the two groups with the most confirmed members, HCG 62 and NGC 741, that is attributable mostly to a subgroup lying 0.3-0.4 Mpc outside of the core. We conclude that at least some poor groups, like rich clusters, are evolving via the accretion of smaller structures from the field. With larger poor group surveys, the incidence of such accretion and the distribution of subgroup masses are potential constraints of cosmological models on mass scales of less than 10^13-10^14 solar masses and on physical scales of less than 0.5 Mpc.
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We use a new fiber spectroscopic survey of 12 nearby, poor groups of galaxies to examine the dynamics and evolution of galaxies in these common, but poorly studied, environments. Some of our conclusions are: (1) The nine groups in our sample with diffuse X-ray emission are in fact bound systems with at least 20-50 group members with absolute magnitudes as faint as M_B ~ -14 + 5 log h. (2) Galaxies in each X-ray-detected group have not all merged together because a significant fraction of the group mass lies outside of the galaxies and in a common halo, thereby reducing the rate of galaxy-galaxy interactions. (3) The similarity of the recent star formation histories and the fraction of early type galaxies in some poor groups to those in rich clusters suggests that cluster-specific environmental effects may not play a dominant role in the recent evolution of cluster galaxies. The evolution of group and cluster members may be driven instead by galaxy-galaxy interactions, which are likely to occur with equal frequency in field groups and in groups that have recently fallen into clusters (i.e., subclusters).
We present the stellar population properties of 13 dwarf galaxies residing in poor groups (low-density environment, LDE) observed with VIMOS@VLT. Ages, metallicities, and [alpha/Fe] ratios were derived from the Lick indices Hbeta, Mgb, Fe5270 and Fe5335 through comparison with our simple stellar population (SSP) models accounting for variable [alpha/Fe] ratios. For a fiducial subsample of 10 early-type dwarfs we derive median values and scatters around the medians of 5.7 pm 4.4 Gyr, -0.26 pm 0.28, and -0.04 pm 0.33 for age, log Z/Zsun, and [alpha/Fe], respectively. For a selection of bright early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the Annibali et al.2007 sample residing in comparable environment we derive median values of 9.8 pm 4.1 Gyr, 0.06 pm 0.16, and 0.18 pm 0.13 for the same stellar population parameters. It follows that dwarfs are on average younger, less metal rich, and less enhanced in the alpha-elements than giants, in agreement with the extrapolation to the low mass regime of the scaling relations derived for giant ETGs. From the total (dwarf + giant) sample we derive that age propto sigma^{0.39 pm 0.22}, Z propto sigma^{0.80 pm 0.16}, and alpha/Fe propto sigma^{0.42 pm 0.22}. We also find correlations with morphology, in the sense that the metallicity and the [alpha/Fe] ratio increase with the Sersic index n or with the bulge-to-total light fraction B/T. The presence of a strong morphology-[alpha/Fe] relation appears to be in contradiction to the possible evolution along the Hubble sequence from low B/T (low n) to high B/T (high n) galaxies. We also investigate the role played by environment comparing the properties of our LDE dwarfs with those of Coma red passive dwarfs from the literature. We find possible evidence that LDE dwarfs experienced more prolonged star formations than Coma dwarfs, however larger data samples are needed to draw more firm conclusions.
We investigate the relation between the projected morphology (b/a) and the velocity dispersion (sigma_v) of groups of galaxies using two recently compiled group catalogs, one based on the 2MASS redshift survey and the other on the SDSS Data Release 5 galaxy catalog. We find that the sigma_v of groups is strongly correlated with the group projected b/a and size, with elongated and larger groups having a lower sigma_v. Such a correlation could be attributed to the dynamical evolution of groups, with groups in the initial stages of formation, having small sigma_v, a large size and an elongated shape that reflects the anisotropic accretion of galaxies along filamentary structures. The same sort of correlations, however, could also be reproduced in prolate-like groups, if the net galaxy motion is preferentially along the group elongation, since then the groups oriented close to the line of sight will appear more spherical, will have a small projected size and large sigma_v, while groups oriented close to the sky-plane will appear larger in projection, more elongated, and will have smaller sigma_v. We perform tests that relate only to the dynamical evolution of groups (eg., calculating the fraction of early type galaxies in groups) and indeed we find a strong positive (negative) correlation between the group sigma_v (projected major axis) with the fraction of early type galaxies. We conclude that (a) the observed dependencies of the group sigma_v on the group projected size and b/a, should be attributed mostly to the dynamical state of groups and (b) groups in the local universe do not constitute a family of objects in dynamical equilibrium, but rather a family of cosmic structures that are presently at various stages of their virialization process.
By means of panoramic spectroscopy at the SAO RAS BTA telescope, we investigated the properties of stellar populations in the central regions of five early-type galaxies -- the NGC 524 group members. The evolution of the central regions of galaxies looks synchronized: the average age of stars in the bulges of all the five galaxies lies in the range of 3--6 Gyr. Four of the five galaxies revealed synchronized bursts of star formation in the nuclei 1--2 Gyr ago. The only galaxy, in which the ages of stellar population in the nucleus and in the bulge coincide (i.e. the nuclear burst of star formation did not take place) is NGC 502, the farthest from the center of the group of all the galaxies studied.
We obtain R-band photometry for galaxies in six nearby poor groups for which we have spectroscopic data, including 328 new galaxy velocities. For the five groups with luminous X-ray halos, the composite group galaxy luminosity function (GLF) is fit adequately by a Schechter function with Mstar = -21.6 +/- 0.4 + 5log h and alpha = -1.3 +/- 0.1. We also find that (1) the ratio of dwarfs to giants is significantly larger for the five groups with luminous X-ray halos than for the one marginally X-ray detected group, (2) the composite GLF for the luminous X-ray groups is consistent in shape with that for rich clusters, (3) the composite group GLF rises more steeply at the faint end than that of the field, (4) the shape difference between the field and composite group GLFs results mostly from the population of non-emission line galaxies, whose dwarf-to-giant ratio is larger in the denser group environment than in the field, and (5) the non-emission line dwarfs are more concentrated about the group center than the non-emission line giants. This last result indicates that the dwarfs and giants occupy different orbits (i.e., have not mixed completely) and suggests that the populations formed at a different times. Our results show that the shape of the GLF varies with environment and that this variation is due primarily to an increase in the dwarf-to-giant ratio of quiescent galaxies in higher density regions, at least up to the densities characteristic of X-ray luminous poor groups. This behavior suggests that, in some environments, dwarfs are more biased than giants with respect to dark matter. This trend conflicts with the prediction of standard biased galaxy formation models. (Abridged)
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