The richest superclusters. II. Galaxy populations

TL;DR

This study analyzes galaxy populations in the richest superclusters, revealing how local and global environments influence galaxy morphology and star formation, with denser regions hosting more passive, early-type galaxies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of galaxy properties in different supercluster regions using Minkowski functionals and luminosity density, highlighting environmental effects on galaxy evolution.

Findings

High-density supercluster cores have more early-type, passive galaxies.

Outer regions contain more blue, star-forming galaxies.

Substructures vary significantly across superclusters.

Abstract

We study the morphology of galaxy populations of the richest superclusters from the catalogue of superclusters of galaxies in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey using the luminosity density distribution and Minkowski functional V3. We compare the properties of grouped and isolated galaxies in regions of different density in superclusters. We find that in high-density cores of rich superclusters there is an excess of early type, passive galaxies, among galaxies in groups and clusters, as well as among those which do not belong to groups, while in lower density outer regions there are more blue, star-forming galaxies both in groups and among those galaxies which do not belong to groups. This also shows that the galaxy content of groups depends on the environment where the groups reside in. The density distributions and the behaviour of the Minkowski functional V3 for different superclusters show that substructures in superclusters as traced by different populations of galaxies are very different. Our results show that both local (group/cluster) and global (supercluster) environments are important in forming galaxy morphologies and star formation activity. The presence of a high density core with X-ray clusters and a relatively small fraction of star-forming galaxies in the supercluster SCL126 may be an indication that this supercluster has started its evolution earlier than the supercluster SCL9.