No Evidence of Asymmetrically Enhanced Star Formation in Infalling Galaxies in UNIONS

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Hauptverfasser: Foster, Lauren M., Parker, Laura C., Gwyn, Stephen, Roberts, Ian D., Taylor, James E., Hudson, Michael J., McConnachie, Alan W., de Boer, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Foster, Lauren M.
Parker, Laura C.
Gwyn, Stephen
Roberts, Ian D.
Taylor, James E.
Hudson, Michael J.
McConnachie, Alan W.
de Boer, Thomas
author_facet Foster, Lauren M.
Parker, Laura C.
Gwyn, Stephen
Roberts, Ian D.
Taylor, James E.
Hudson, Michael J.
McConnachie, Alan W.
de Boer, Thomas
contents Ram pressure stripping is a well-known environmental quenching mechanism that removes gas from galaxies infalling into groups and clusters. In some extreme examples of ram pressure stripping, galaxies with extended gas tails show evidence of enhanced star formation prior to quenching. In this work we use a sample of 5277 local satellite galaxies in which a stripped tail of gas has not necessarily been observed, to quantify the strength of ram pressure-enhanced star formation and compare these results to a control sample of 8360 field galaxies. We use u-band imaging from the Ultraviolet-Near Infrared Northern Survey (UNIONS) as a star formation tracer and several metrics to quantify star formation asymmetry. We compare these results to environmental properties of the galaxy, such as their time since infall and host halo mass, to constrain the degree of ram pressure enhanced star formation as a function of environment. We find no significant differences between the satellite and the field samples. We further restrict our sample to galaxies which we most expect to be experiencing significant ram pressure but find no strong evidence of these galaxies having systematically enhanced star formation. Finally, we investigate the properties of the most asymmetric galaxies in our sample and again find no strong evidence of ram pressure-induced star formation enhancement. We conclude that any star formation enhancement must be small for infalling galaxies, suggesting that this effect is either uncommon or short-lived.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13123
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle No Evidence of Asymmetrically Enhanced Star Formation in Infalling Galaxies in UNIONS
Foster, Lauren M.
Parker, Laura C.
Gwyn, Stephen
Roberts, Ian D.
Taylor, James E.
Hudson, Michael J.
McConnachie, Alan W.
de Boer, Thomas
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Ram pressure stripping is a well-known environmental quenching mechanism that removes gas from galaxies infalling into groups and clusters. In some extreme examples of ram pressure stripping, galaxies with extended gas tails show evidence of enhanced star formation prior to quenching. In this work we use a sample of 5277 local satellite galaxies in which a stripped tail of gas has not necessarily been observed, to quantify the strength of ram pressure-enhanced star formation and compare these results to a control sample of 8360 field galaxies. We use u-band imaging from the Ultraviolet-Near Infrared Northern Survey (UNIONS) as a star formation tracer and several metrics to quantify star formation asymmetry. We compare these results to environmental properties of the galaxy, such as their time since infall and host halo mass, to constrain the degree of ram pressure enhanced star formation as a function of environment. We find no significant differences between the satellite and the field samples. We further restrict our sample to galaxies which we most expect to be experiencing significant ram pressure but find no strong evidence of these galaxies having systematically enhanced star formation. Finally, we investigate the properties of the most asymmetric galaxies in our sample and again find no strong evidence of ram pressure-induced star formation enhancement. We conclude that any star formation enhancement must be small for infalling galaxies, suggesting that this effect is either uncommon or short-lived.
title No Evidence of Asymmetrically Enhanced Star Formation in Infalling Galaxies in UNIONS
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13123