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Published July 10, 2016 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

The Effects of the Local Environment and Stellar Mass on Galaxy Quenching to z ~ 3

Abstract

We study the effects of the local environment and stellar mass on galaxy properties using a mass complete sample of quiescent and star-forming systems in the COSMOS field at z ≾ 3. We show that at z ≾ 1 the median star formation rate (SFR) and specific SFR (sSFR) of all galaxies depend on the environment, but they become independent of the environment at z ≳ 1. However, we find that only for star-forming galaxies, the median SFR and sSFR are similar in different environments regardless of redshift and stellar mass. We find that the quiescent fraction depends on the environment at z ≾ 1 and on stellar mass out to z ~ 3. We show that at z ≾ 1 galaxies become quiescent faster in denser environments and that the overall environmental quenching efficiency increases with cosmic time. Environmental and mass quenching processes depend on each other. At z ≾ 1 denser environments more efficiently quench galaxies with higher masses (log(M/M_☉) ≳ 10.7), possibly due to a higher merger rate of massive galaxies in denser environments. We also show that mass quenching is more efficient in denser regions. We show that the overall mass quenching efficiency (є_(mass) for more massive galaxies (log(M/M_☉) ≳ 10.2) rises with cosmic time until z ~ 1 and then flattens out. However, for less massive galaxies, the rise in є_(mass) continues to the present time. Our results suggest that environmental quenching is only relevant at z ≾ 1 and is likely a fast process, whereas mass quenching is the dominant mechanism at z ≳ 1 with a possible stellar feedback physics.

Additional Information

© 2016 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 January 19; revised 2016 April 19; accepted 2016 May 9; published 2016 July 8. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for reading the manuscript and providing very useful comments which significantly improved the quality of this work. B.D. acknowledges financial support from NASA through the Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP), grant number NNX12AE20G. B.D. wishes to thank Brian Siana, Gabriela Canalizo, and Chang Hoon Hahn for their helpful comments and discussions. D.S. acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) through a Veni Fellowship, from FCT through an FCT Investigator Starting Grant and Startup Grant (IF/01154/2012/CP0189/CT0010), and from FCT grant PEst-OE/FIS/UI2751/2014. A.F. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. This work extensively uses COSMOS UltraVISTA data that are based on data products from observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under ESO program ID 179.A-2005 and on data products produced by TERAPIX and the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit on behalf of the UltraVISTA consortium.

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Published - apj_825_2_113.pdf

Submitted - 1605.03182v1.pdf

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August 22, 2023
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