Stellar populations in superclusters of galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates how the large-scale environment of superclusters influences galaxy stellar populations, finding that richer superclusters have denser environments and older stars, but supercluster morphology has little effect.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of supercluster environments and their impact on galaxy stellar populations, highlighting the scale at which environment influences galaxy properties.

Findings

Richer superclusters have denser environments and older stellar populations.

Supercluster morphology (filaments vs pancakes) does not significantly affect stellar populations.

Environmental effects on galaxy properties are more prominent at group and cluster scales.

Abstract

A catalogue of superclusters of galaxies is used to investigate the influence of the supercluster environment on galaxy populations, considering galaxies brighter than M$_r<$-21+5$\log$ h. Empirical spectral synthesis techniques are applied to obtain the stellar population properties of galaxies which belong to superclusters and representative values of stellar population parameters are attributed to each supercluster. We show that richer superclusters present denser environments and older stellar populations. The galaxy populations of superclusters classified as filaments and pancakes are statistically similar, indicating that the morphology of superclusters does not have a significative influence on the stellar populations. Clusters of galaxies within superclusters are also examined in order to evaluate the influence of the supercluster environment on their galaxy properties. Our results suggest that the environment affects galaxy properties but its influence should operate on scales of groups and clusters, more than on the scale of superclusters.