Star-forming Dwarf Galaxies in Filamentary Structures around the Virgo Cluster: Probing Chemical Pre-processing in Filament Environments

TL;DR

This study investigates the chemical and star formation properties of star-forming dwarf galaxies in filamentary structures around the Virgo cluster, revealing environmental effects on galaxy evolution prior to cluster infall.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how filament environments influence chemical pre-processing and galaxy transformation, highlighting differences among filaments and the role of local interactions.

Findings

SFDGs in Virgo filaments have lower metallicity than those in the cluster.

Virgo III filament SFDGs show higher metallicity and lower star formation, similar to cluster galaxies.

Approximately half of Virgo III SFDGs are transitional, indicating ongoing morphological transformation.

Abstract

It has been proposed that the filament environment is closely connected to the pre-processing of galaxies, where their properties may have been changed by environmental effects in the filament before they fell into the galaxy cluster. We present the chemical properties of star-forming dwarf galaxies (SFDGs) in five filamentary structures (Virgo III, Leo Minor, Leo II A, Leo II B, and Canes Venatici) around the Virgo cluster using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey optical spectroscopic data and Galaxy Evolution Explorer ultraviolet photometric data. We investigate the relationship between stellar mass, gas-phase metallicity, and specific star formation rate (sSFR) of SFDGs in the Virgo filaments in comparison to those in the Virgo cluster and field. We find that, at a given stellar mass, SFDGs in the Virgo filaments show lower metallicity and higher sSFR than those in the Virgo cluster on average. We observe that SFDGs in the Virgo III filament show enhanced metallicities and suppressed star formation activities comparable to those in the Virgo cluster, whereas SFDGs in the other four filaments exhibit similar properties to the field counterparts. Moreover, about half of the galaxies in the Virgo III filament are found to be morphologically transitional dwarf galaxies that are supposed to be on the way to transforming into quiescent dwarf early-type galaxies. Based on the analysis of the galaxy perturbation parameter, we propose that the local environment represented by the galaxy interactions might be responsible for the contrasting features in "chemical pre-processing" found in the Virgo filaments.