VST-GAME: Galaxy Assembly as a function of Mass and Environment with VST. Photometric assessment and density field of MACSJ0416

TL;DR

This study analyzes galaxy properties and environmental effects in the cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 using deep multi-band optical data, revealing color bimodality, density-dependent galaxy evolution, and identifying overdense regions in the outskirts.

Contribution

It provides a detailed photometric analysis and density field characterization of the cluster outskirts, highlighting environmental influences on galaxy evolution at intermediate redshift.

Findings

Galaxy color bimodality varies with environment.

Red galaxy peak shifts to redder with increasing density.

Identified three overdense regions at large cluster radii.

Abstract

Observational studies have widely demonstrated that galaxy physical properties are strongly affected by the surrounding environment. On one side, gas inflows provide galaxies with new fuel for star formation. On the other side, the high temperatures and densities of the medium are expected to induce quenching in the star formation. Observations of large structures, in particular filaments at the cluster outskirts (r>2r$_{200}$), are currently limited to the low redshift Universe. We present a multi-band dataset for the cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 (z=0.397), observed in the context of the Galaxy Assembly as a function of Mass and Environment with VST (VST-GAME) survey. The project aims at gathering deep ($r$<24.4) and wide (20x20Mpc$^2$) observations at optical wavelengths for six massive galaxy clusters at 0.2<z<0.6, complemented with near infrared data. This work describes the photometric analysis of the cluster, defines a density field and studies galaxy properties in the cluster outskirts. We extract sources paying particular attention to recover the faintest ones. We combine all the extractions in a multi-band catalog and compute photometric redshifts. We then define cluster memberships up to 5r$_{200}$ from the cluster core and measure the density field, comparing galaxy properties in different environments. We found that the $g-r$ colors show bimodal behaviours in all the environments, but the peak of the distribution of red galaxies shifts toward redder colors with increasing density and the fraction of galaxies in the blue cloud increases with decreasing density. We also found 3 overdense regions in the cluster outskirts at r$\sim$5r$_{200}$. The color of galaxies suggests the presence of evolved galaxy populations, an insight for pre-processing phenomena over these substructures. We release the multi-band catalog, down to the completeness limit $r$<24.4 mag.