The distribution of satellites around massive galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in ZFOURGE/CANDELS: Dependence on star formation activity
- George P. and Cynthia W. Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A and M University, College Station, TX 77843 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109 (Australia)
- Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, VIC 3122 (Australia)
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden (Netherlands)
- Australian Astronomical Observatories, P.O. Box 915, North Ryde, NSW 1670 (Australia)
- University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town 7535 (South Africa)
- Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904 (Israel)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD (United Kingdom)
- University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, 452 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
We study the statistical distribution of satellites around star-forming and quiescent central galaxies at 1 < z < 3 using imaging from the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey and the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey. The deep near-IR data select satellites down to log (M/M {sub ☉}) > 9 at z < 3. The radial satellite distribution around centrals is consistent with a projected Navarro-Frenk-White profile. Massive quiescent centrals, log (M/M {sub ☉}) > 10.78, have ∼2 times the number of satellites compared to star-forming centrals with a significance of 2.7σ even after accounting for differences in the centrals' stellar-mass distributions. We find no statistical difference in the satellite distributions of intermediate-mass quiescent and star-forming centrals, 10.48 < log (M/M {sub ☉}) < 10.78. Compared to the Guo et al. semi-analytic model, the excess number of satellites indicates that quiescent centrals have halo masses 0.3 dex larger than star-forming centrals, even when the stellar-mass distributions are fixed. We use a simple toy model that relates halo mass and quenching, which roughly reproduces the observed quenched fractions and the differences in halo mass between star-forming and quenched galaxies only if galaxies have a quenching probability that increases with halo mass from ∼0 for log (M{sub h} /M {sub ☉}) ∼ 11 to ∼1 for log (M{sub h} /M {sub ☉}) ∼ 13.5. A single halo-mass quenching threshold is unable to reproduce the quiescent fraction and satellite distribution of centrals. Therefore, while halo quenching may be an important mechanism, it is unlikely to be the only factor driving quenching. It remains unclear why a high fraction of centrals remain star-forming even in relatively massive halos.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365119
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 792, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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