Individual and Group Galaxies in CNOC1 clusters

TL;DR

This study examines how galaxy populations in intermediate-redshift clusters evolve with environment, revealing that dark matter halo properties significantly influence galaxy evolution and the observed Butcher-Oemler effect.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical photometric redshift technique and analyzes the impact of local and global environments on galaxy evolution in clusters.

Findings

Galaxy red fraction depends on local density and cluster radius.

The Butcher-Oemler effect is present across all environment bins.

Dark matter halo properties influence galaxy evolutionary history.

Abstract

Using wide-field $BVR_cI$ imaging for a sample of 16 intermediate redshift ($0.17 < z < 0.55$) galaxy clusters from the Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology (CNOC1) Survey, we investigate the dependence of cluster galaxy populations and their evolution on environment. Galaxy photometric redshifts are estimated using an empirical photometric redshift technique and galaxy groups are identified using a modified friends-of-friends algorithm in photometric redshift space.We utilize the red galaxy fraction (\fred) to infer the evolutionary status of galaxies in clusters, using both individual galaxies and galaxies in groups. We apply the local galaxy density, \sig5, derived using the fifth nearest-neighbor distance, as a measure of local environment, and the cluster-centric radius, \rCL, as a proxy for global cluster environment. Our cluster sample exhibits a Butcher-Oemler effect in both luminosity-selected and stellar-mass-selected samples. We find that \fred depends strongly on \sig5 and \rCL, and the Butcher-Oemler effect is observed in all \sig5 and \rCL bins. However, when the cluster galaxies are separated into \rCL bins, or into group and non-group subsamples, the dependence on local galaxy density becomes much weaker. This suggests that the properties of the dark matter halo in which the galaxy resides have a dominant effect on its galaxy population and evolutionary history. We find that our data are consistent with the scenario that cluster galaxies situated in successively richer groups (i.e., more massive dark matter halos) reach a high \fred value at earlier redshifts. Associated with this, we observe a clear signature of `pre-processing', in which ... <and more>