Denser Environments Cultivate Larger Galaxies: A Comprehensive Study beyond the Local Universe with 3 Million Hyper Suprime-Cam Galaxies
Abstract
The relationship between galaxy size and environment has remained enigmatic, with over a decade of conflicting results. We present one of the first comprehensive studies of the variation of galaxy radius with environment beyond the local Universe and demonstrate that large-scale environmental density is correlated with galaxy radius independent of stellar mass and galaxy morphology. We confirm with >5σ confidence that galaxies in denser environments are up to ∼25% larger than their equally massive counterparts with similar morphology in less dense regions of the Universe. We achieve this result by correlating projected two-dimensional densities over ∼360 deg2 with the structural parameters of ∼3 million Hyper Suprime-Cam galaxies at 0.3 ≤ z < 0.7 with
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- August 2024
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2408.07128
- Bibcode:
- 2024ApJ...971..142G
- Keywords:
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- Extragalactic astronomy;
- Galaxies;
- Galaxy evolution;
- Galaxy structure;
- Galaxy environments;
- 506;
- 573;
- 594;
- 622;
- 2029;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 29 pages, 13 figures. Published in The Astrophysical Journal. We welcome comments and constructive criticism