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Creators/Authors contains: "Rudnick, G"

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  1. Aims.JWST/NIRCam provides rest-frame near-IR photometry of galaxies up toz = 2.5 with exquisite depth and accuracy. This affords us an unprecedented view of the evolution of the UV/optical/near-IR color distribution and its interpretation in terms of the evolving dust attenuation,AV. Methods.We used the value-added data products (photometric redshift, stellar mass, rest-frameU − VandV − Jcolors, andAV) provided by the public DAWN JWST Archive. These data products derive from fitting the spectral energy distributions obtained from multiple NIRCam imaging surveys, augmented with preexisting HST imaging data. Our sample consists of a stellar-mass-complete sample of ≈28 000M >  109 Mgalaxies in the redshift range 0.5 <  z <  2.5. Results.TheV − Jcolor distribution of star-forming galaxies evolves strongly, in particular for high-mass galaxies (M >  3 × 1010 M), which have a pronounced tail of very red galaxies reachingV − J >  2.5 atz >  1.5 that does not exist atz <  1. Such redV − Jcan only be explained by dust attenuation, with typical values forM ≈ 1011 Mgalaxies in the rangeAV ≈ 1.5 − 3.5 atz ≈ 2. This redshift evolution went largely unnoticed before. Today, however, photometric redshift estimates for the reddest (V − J >  2.5), most attenuated galaxies have markedly improved thanks to the new, precise photometry, which is in much better agreement with the 25 available spectroscopic redshifts for such galaxies. The reddest population readily stands out as the independently identified population of galaxies detected at submillimeter wavelengths. Despite the increased attenuation,U − Vcolors across the entire mass range are slightly bluer at higherz. A well-defined and tight color sequence exists at redshifts 0.5 <  z <  2.5 forM >  3 × 1010 Mquiescent galaxies, in bothU − VandV − J, but inV − Jit is bluer rather than redder compared to star-forming galaxies. In conclusion, whereas the rest-frame UV-optical color distribution evolves remarkably little fromz = 0.5 toz = 2.5, the rest-frame optical/near-IR color distribution evolves strongly, primarily due to a very substantial increase with redshift in dust attenuation for massive galaxies. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available September 1, 2026
  2. Galaxy evolution depends on the environment in which galaxies are located. The various physical processes (ram-pressure stripping, tidal interactions, etc.) that are able to affect the gas content in galaxies have different efficiencies in different environments. In this work, we examine the gas (atomic HI and molecular H2) content of local galaxies inside and outside clusters, groups, and filaments as well as in isolation using a combination of observational and simulated data. We exploited a catalogue of galaxies in the Virgo cluster (including the surrounding filaments and groups) and compared the data against the predictions of the Galaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) semi-analytic model, which has explicit prescriptions for partitioning the cold gas content in its atomic and molecular phases. We extracted from the model both a mock catalogue that mimics the observational biases and one not tailored to observations in order to study the impact of observational limits on the results and predict trends in regimes not covered by the current observations. The observations and simulated data show that galaxies within filaments exhibit intermediate cold gas content between galaxies in clusters and in isolation. The amount of HI is typically more sensitive to the environment than H2and low-mass galaxies (log10[M/M]< 10) are typically more affected than their massive (log10[M/M]> 10) counterparts. Considering only model data, we identified two distinct populations among filament galaxies present in similar proportions: those simultaneously lying in groups and isolated galaxies. The former has properties more similar to cluster and group galaxies, and the latter is more similar to those of field galaxies. We therefore did not detect the strong effects of filaments themselves on the gas content of galaxies, and we ascribe the results to the presence of groups in filaments. 
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  3. Abstract The changes in colors across a galaxy are intimately connected to the galaxy’s formation, growth, quenching history, and dust content. A particularly important epoch in the growth of galaxies is nearz∼ 2, often referred to as “cosmic noon,” where galaxies on average reach the peak of their star formation. We study a population of 125 cluster galaxies atz∼ 1.6 in three Hubble Space Telescope filters, F475W, F625W, and F160W, roughly corresponding to the rest-frame far-ultraviolet, near-ultraviolet, andrband, respectively. By comparing to a control sample of 200 field galaxies at similar redshift, we reveal clear, statistically significant differences in the overall spatially resolved colors and color gradients in galaxies across these two different environments. On average, cluster galaxies have redder ultraviolet colors in both the inner and outer regions bounded byr50, as well as an overall wider dispersion of outside-in color gradients. The presence of these observed differences, along with evidence from ancillary data from previous studies, strongly suggests that the environment drives these population-level color differences, by affecting the stellar populations and/or dust content. 
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  4. Abstract We investigate the resolved kinematics of the molecular gas, as traced by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in CO (2−1), of 25 cluster member galaxies across three different clusters at a redshift ofz∼ 1.6. This is the first large-scale analysis of the molecular gas kinematics of cluster galaxies at this redshift. By separately estimating the rotation curve of the approaching and receding sides of each galaxy via kinematic modeling, we quantify the difference in total circular velocity to characterize the overall kinematic asymmetry of each galaxy. 3/14 of the galaxies in our sample that we are able to model have similar degrees of asymmetry as that observed in galaxies in the field at similar redshift based on observations of mainly ionized gas. However, this leaves 11/14 galaxies in our sample with significantly higher asymmetry, and some of these galaxies have degrees of asymmetry of up to ∼50 times higher than field galaxies observed at similar redshift. Some of these extreme cases also have one-sided tail-like morphology seen in the molecular gas, supporting a scenario of tidal and/or ram pressure interaction. Such stark differences in the kinematic asymmetry in clusters versus the field suggest the evolutionary influence of dense environments, established as being a major driver of galaxy evolution at low redshift, is also active in the high-redshift universe. 
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  5. It is now well established that galaxies have different morphologies, gas contents, and star formation rates (SFR) in dense environments like galaxy clusters. The impact of environmental density extends to several virial radii, and galaxies appear to be pre-processed in filaments and groups before falling into the cluster. Our goal is to quantify this pre-processing in terms of gas content and SFR, as a function of density in cosmic filaments. We have observed the two first CO transitions in 163 galaxies with the IRAM-30 m telescope, and added 82 more measurements from the literature, thus forming a sample of 245 galaxies in the filaments around the Virgo cluster. We gathered HI-21cm measurements from the literature and observed 69 galaxies with the Nançay telescope to complete our sample. We compare our filament galaxies with comparable samples from the Virgo cluster and with the isolated galaxies of the AMIGA sample. We find a clear progression from field galaxies to filament and cluster galaxies for decreasing SFR, increasing fraction of galaxies in the quenching phase, an increasing proportion of early-type galaxies, and decreasing gas content. Galaxies in the quenching phase, defined as having a SFR below one-third of that of the main sequence (MS), are only between 0% and 20% in the isolated sample, according to local galaxy density, while they are 20%–60% in the filaments and 30%–80% in the Virgo cluster. Processes that lead to star formation quenching are already at play in filaments; they depend mostly on the local galaxy density, while the distance to the filament spine is a secondary parameter. While the HI-to-stellar-mass ratio decreases with local density by an order of magnitude in the filaments, and two orders of magnitude in the Virgo cluster with respect to the field, the decrease is much less for the H 2 -to-stellar-mass ratio. As the environmental density increases, the gas depletion time decreases, because the gas content decreases faster than the SFR. This suggests that gas depletion precedes star formation quenching. 
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