ABSTRACT We present an analysis of the galaxy stellar mass function (SMF) of 14 known protoclusters between 2.0 < z < 2.5 in the COSMOS field, down to a mass limit of 109.5 M⊙. We use existing photometric redshifts with a statistical background subtraction, and consider star-forming and quiescent galaxies identified from (NUV − r) and (r − J) colours separately. Our fiducial sample includes galaxies within 1 Mpc of the cluster centres. The shape of the protocluster SMF of star-forming galaxies is indistinguishable from that of the general field at this redshift. Quiescent galaxies, however, show a flatter SMF than in the field, with an upturn at low mass, though this is only significant at ∼2σ. There is no strong evidence for a dominant population of quiescent galaxies at any mass, with a fraction <15 per cent at 1σ confidence for galaxies with log M*/M⊙ < 10.5. We compare our results with a sample of galaxy groups at 1 < z < 1.5, and demonstrate that a significant amount of environmental quenching must take place between these epochs, increasing the relative abundance of high-mass ($$\rm M_{\ast } \gt 10^{10.5} {\rm M}_{\odot }$$) quiescent galaxies by a factor ≳ 2. However, we find that at lower masses ($$\rm M_{\ast } \lt 10^{10.5} {\rm M}_{\odot }$$), no additional environmental quenching is required.
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The evolution of the size–mass relation at z = 1–3 derived from the complete Hubble Frontier Fields data set
ABSTRACT We measure the size–mass relation and its evolution between redshifts 1 < z < 3, using galaxies lensed by six foreground Hubble Frontier Fields clusters. The power afforded by strong gravitation lensing allows us to observe galaxies with higher angular resolution beyond current facilities. We select a stellar mass limited sample and divide them into star-forming or quiescent classes based on their rest-frame UVJ colours from the ASTRODEEP catalogues. Source reconstruction is carried out with the recently released lenstruction software, which is built on the multipurpose gravitational lensing software lenstronomy. We derive the empirical relation between size and mass for the late-type galaxies with $$M_{*}\gt 3\times 10^{9}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$ at 1 < z < 2.5 and $$M_{*}\gt 5\times 10^{9}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$ at 2.5 < z < 3, and at a fixed stellar mass, we find galaxy sizes evolve as $$R \rm _{eff} \propto (1+z)^{-1.05\pm 0.37}$$. The intrinsic scatter is <0.1 dex at z < 1.5 but increases to ∼0.3 dex at higher redshift. The results are in good agreement with those obtained in blank fields. We evaluate the uncertainties associated with the choice of lens model by comparing size measurements using five different and publicly available models, finding the choice of lens model leads to a 3.7 per cent uncertainty of the median value, and ∼25 per cent scatter for individual galaxies. Our work demonstrates the use of strong lensing magnification to boost resolution does not introduce significant uncertainties in this kind of work, and paves the way for wholesale applications of the sophisticated lens reconstruction technique to higher redshifts and larger samples.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1815458
- PAR ID:
- 10287416
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 501
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1028 to 1037
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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