A detailed look at the stellar populations in green valley galaxies - INSU - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Année : 2020

A detailed look at the stellar populations in green valley galaxies

James Angthopo
  • Fonction : Auteur
Ignacio Ferreras
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

The green valley (GV) represents an important transitional state from actively star-forming galaxies to passively evolving systems. Its traditional definition, based on colour, rests on a number of assumptions that can be subjected to non-trivial systematics. In Angthopo, Ferreras & Silk (2019), we proposed a new definition of the GV based on the 4000 Å break strength. In this paper, we explore in detail the properties of the underlying stellar populations by use of ∼230 thousand high-quality spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), contrasting our results with a traditional approach via dust-corrected colours. We explore high-quality stacked SDSS spectra, and find a population trend that suggests a substantial difference between low- and high-mass galaxies, with the former featuring younger populations with star formation quenching, and the latter showing older (post-quenching) populations that include rejuvenation events. Subtle but measurable differences are found between a colour-based approach and our definition, especially as our selection of GV galaxies produces a cleaner 'stratification' of the GV, with more homogeneous population properties within sections of the GV. Our definition based on 4000 Å break strength gives a clean representation of the transition to quiescence, easily measurable in the upcoming and future spectroscopic surveys.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
staa1276.pdf (2.2 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

insu-03748070 , version 1 (09-08-2022)

Identifiants

Citer

James Angthopo, Ignacio Ferreras, Joseph Silk. A detailed look at the stellar populations in green valley galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2020, 495, pp.2720-2737. ⟨10.1093/mnras/staa1276⟩. ⟨insu-03748070⟩
11 Consultations
15 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Mastodon Facebook X LinkedIn More