Revealing impacts of stellar mass and environment on galaxy quenching

Abstract

Aims. Galaxy quenching is a critical step in galaxy evolution. In this work, we present a statistical study of galaxy quenching in 17 cluster candidates at 0.5 <  z <  1.0 in the COSMOS field. Methods. We selected cluster members with a wide range of stellar masses and environments to study their mass and environment dependence. Member galaxies are classified into star-forming, quiescent, and recently quenched galaxies (RQGs) using the rest-frame UVJ diagram. We further separated fast- and slow-quenching RQGs by model evolutionary tracks on the UVJ diagram. We defined the quenching efficiency as the ratio of RQGs to star-forming galaxies and the quenching stage as the ratio of RQGs to quiescent galaxies to quantify the quenching processes. Results. We find that quenching efficiency is enhanced by both higher stellar mass and denser environment. Massive or dense environment galaxies quench earlier. Slow quenching is more dominant for massive galaxies and at lower redshifts, but no clear dependence on the environment is found. Our results suggest that low-mass galaxies in dense environments are likely quenched through a short timescale process such as ram pressure stripping, while massive galaxies in a sparse environment are mostly quenched by a longer timescale process. Using the line strength of Hδ and [OII], we confirmed that our UVJ method to select RQGs agrees with high S/N DEIMOS spectra. However, we caution that the visibility time (duration of a galaxy’s stay in the RQG region on the UVJ diagram) may also depend on mass or environment. The method introduced in this work can be applied to RQG candidates for future statistical RQG spectroscopic surveys. The systematic spectroscopic RQG study will disentangle the degeneracy between visibility time and quenching properties.