Tim Weinzirl, Alfonso Aragon-Salamanca, Meghan E. Gray, Steven P. Bamford, Bruno Rodriguez del Pino, Ana L. Chies-Santos, Asmus Boehm, Christian Wolf, Richard J. Cool. 2017. OMEGA – OSIRIS Mapping of Emission-line Galaxies in A901/2-III. Galaxy properties across projected phase space in A901/2. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 471, 1, 182-200, DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx1525
We conduct a comprehensive projected phase-space analysis of the A901/2 multicluster system at z similar to 0.165. Aggregating redshifts from spectroscopy, tunable-filter imaging and prism techniques, we assemble a sample of 856 cluster galaxies reaching 10(8.5)M(circle dot) in stellar mass. We look for variations in cluster galaxy properties between virialized and non-virialized regions of projected phase space (PPS). Our main conclusions point to relatively gentle environmental effects, expressed mainly on galaxy gas reservoirs. (1) Stacking the four subclusters in A901/2, we find galaxies in the virialized region are more massive, redder and have marginally higher Sersic indices, but their half-light radii and Hubble types are not significantly different. (2) After accounting for trends in stellar mass, there is a remaining change in rest-frame colour across PPS. Primarily, the colour difference is due to the absence in the virialized region of galaxies with rest frame B – V < 0.7 and moderate-to-high (M-circle dot > 10(9.85) M-circle dot) stellar mass. (3) There is an infalling population of lower mass (M-circle dot = 10(9.85) M-circle dot), relatively blue (B V < 0.7) elliptical or spheroidal galaxies that are strikingly absent in the virialized region. (4) The number of bona fide star-forming and active galactic nucleus galaxies in the PPS regions is strongly dictated by stellar mass. However, there remains a reduced fraction of star-forming galaxies in the centres of the clusters at fixed stellar mass, consistent with the star formation-density relation in galaxy clusters. (5) There is no change in specific Ha-derived star formation rates of star-forming galaxies at fixed mass across the cluster environment. This suggests that pre-processing of galaxies during infall plays a prominent role in quenching star formation.
