CFHTLenS: The Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Halo Masses from Weak Lensing

TL;DR

This study uses weak gravitational lensing to investigate how galaxy environment influences dark matter halo masses, revealing that satellite galaxies in dense environments have significantly stripped halos compared to those in less dense regions.

Contribution

It provides the first observational evidence that satellite galaxy halos are tidally stripped in dense environments, using CFHTLenS data and comparison with simulations.

Findings

Satellite galaxy halos are less massive in dense environments.

Halo stripping is consistent with a tidal truncation radius of ~40 kpc.

Lensing signals show environmental dependence of galaxy halo masses.

Abstract

We use weak gravitational lensing to analyse the dark matter halos around satellite galaxies in galaxy groups in the CFHTLenS dataset. This dataset is derived from the CFHTLS-Wide survey, and encompasses 154 sq. deg of high-quality shape data. Using the photometric redshifts, we divide the sample of lens galaxies with stellar masses in the range 10^9 Msun to 10^10.5 Msun into those likely to lie in high-density environments (HDE) and those likely to lie in low-density environments (LDE). Through comparison with galaxy catalogues extracted from the Millennium Simulation, we show that the sample of HDE galaxies should primarily (~61%) consist of satellite galaxies in groups, while the sample of LDE galaxies should consist of mostly (~87%) non-satellite (field and central) galaxies. Comparing the lensing signals around samples of HDE and LDE galaxies matched in stellar mass, the lensing signal around HDE galaxies clearly shows a positive contribution from their host groups on their lensing signals at radii of ~500--1000 kpc, the typical separation between satellites and group centres. More importantly, the subhalos of HDE galaxies are less massive than those around LDE galaxies by a factor 0.65 +/- 0.12, significant at the 2.9 sigma level. A natural explanation is that the halos of satellite galaxies are stripped through tidal effects in the group environment. Our results are consistent with a typical tidal truncation radius of ~40 kpc.