Star formation histories of early-type galaxies at z = 1.2 in cluster and field environments

TL;DR

This study compares the star formation histories of early-type galaxies at z=1.2 in cluster and field environments, revealing that cluster galaxies formed earlier and more rapidly than their field counterparts, especially at lower masses.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of star formation timelines for early-type galaxies in different environments at high redshift, highlighting environmental effects on galaxy evolution.

Findings

Cluster early-types formed stars ~0.5 Gyr earlier than field counterparts.

Lower mass galaxies show more pronounced environmental differences.

The cluster red sequence was established over 1 Gyr and likely dissolved by z~2.

Abstract

We derive the star formation histories of early-type galaxies at z = 1.2 in both low and high density environments. To this purpose, we compare the co-added spectroscopic and 8-9 band photometric data of 43 mass selected early-type galaxies in the massive cluster RDCS J1252.9-2927 and the GOODS/CDF-S field with a large grid of composite stellar population models. We find that the cluster early-type galaxies formed the bulk of their stars approximately 0.5 Gyr earlier than early-types in the field, whereas field early-types presumably finish forming their stellar content on a longer time scale. Such a difference is particularly evident at lower masses but becomes negligible for the most massive galaxies. While our differential analysis of the stellar population parameters of cluster and field galaxies in the same mass range convincingly shows distinct star formation histories, the absolute age difference remains model dependent. Using the star formation histories that best fit the SEDs of the red sequence galaxies in RDCS 1252.9-2927, we reconstruct the evolution of the cluster red sequence and find that it was established over 1 Gyr and is expected to dissolve by z ~ 2.