Evolution of Galaxy Types and HI Gas Contents in Galaxy Groups

TL;DR

This study investigates how galaxy group age, indicated by crossing time, correlates with the fraction of spiral galaxies and neutral hydrogen gas, revealing insights into galaxy evolution mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis linking group crossing time to HI gas content and galaxy morphology using SDSS and ALFALFA data, highlighting the role of starvation in gas depletion.

Findings

Group spiral fraction correlates with crossing time.

HI mass fraction correlates with crossing time.

Starvation likely dominates over stripping in HI depletion.

Abstract

Using the group crossing time $t_{\rm c}$ as an age indicator for galaxy groups, we have investigated the correlation between $t_{\rm c}$ and the group spiral fraction, as well as between $t_{\rm c}$ and the neutral hydrogen gas fraction of galaxy groups. Our galaxy group sample is selected from the SDSS DR7 catalog, and the group spiral fraction is derived from the Galaxy Zoo morphological data set. We found that the group spiral galaxy fraction is correlated with the group crossing time. We further cross matched the latest released ALFALFA 70\% HI source catalog with the SDSS group catalog and have identified 172 groups from the SDSS survey whose total HI mass can be derived by summing up the HI mass of all the HI sources within the group radius. For the galaxies not detected in the ALFALFA, we estimate their HI masses based on the galaxies' optical colors and magnitudes. Our sample groups contain more than 8 member galaxies, they cover a wide range of halo masses and are distributed in different cosmic environments. We derived the group HI mass fraction which is the ratio of group HI mass to the group virial mass. We found a correlation between the HI mass fraction and the group crossing time. Our results suggest that long time scale mechanisms such as starvation seem to play a more important role than short time scale processes like stripping in depleting HI gas in the SDSS galaxy groups.