The large-scale environment of low surface brightness galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates the large-scale environments of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) using SDSS data, revealing they reside in lower-density regions than high surface brightness galaxies (HSBs), suggesting a formation in low-density areas and migration over cosmic time.

Contribution

It introduces the first LSB-HSB Antibias parameter and provides new insights into the large-scale environmental differences of LSBs compared to HSBs.

Findings

LSBs have lower galaxy density environments than HSBs on 2-5 Mpc scales.

The LSB-HSB Antibias parameter is 10%-15%.

LSBs likely formed in low-density regions and migrated outward.

Abstract

The exact formation scenarios and evolutionary processes that led to the existence of the class of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) have not yet been understood completely. Since the environment of LSBs has been studied before only on small scales (below 2 Mpc), a study of the galaxy content in the vicinity of LSB galaxies on larger scales could add a lot to our understanding of the origin of this galaxy class. We used the spectroscopic main galaxy sample of the SDSS DR4 to investigate the environmental galaxy density of LSB galaxies compared to the galaxy density in the vicinity of high surface brightness galaxies (HSBs). The environment studies, divided into two redshift bins, show that both the low mass, and the more massive LSBs possess an environment with a lower galaxy density than HSBs. The differences in the galaxy density between LSBs and HSBs are significant on scales between 2 and 5 Mpc, the scales of groups and filaments. To quantify this, we have introduced for the first time the LSB-HSB Antibias. The obtained LSB-HSB Antibias parameter has a value of 10%-15%. From these results we conclude that LSBs formed in low-density regions of the initial universe and have drifted until now to the outer parts of the filaments and walls of the large-scale structure. Furthermore, our results, together with actual cosmological simulations, show that LSBs are caused by a mixture of nature and nurture.