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arXiv · 1010.3864

The Stellar Populations of Bright Coma Cluster Galaxies

James Price·Steve Phillipps·Avon Huxor·Russell J Smith·John R Lucey
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Abstract

In this paper we study the stellar populations of 356 bright, $M_{r}$ $\leq$ -19, Coma cluster members located in a 2 degree field centred on the cluster core using SDSS DR7 spectroscopy. For the quiescent galaxies we find strong correlations between absorption line index strength and velocity dispersion ($\sigma$) for CN2, C4668, Mgb and H$\beta$. We find significant cluster-centric radial gradients in H$\beta$, Mgb and C4668 for the passive galaxies. We use state-of-the-art stellar population models \citep{schiavon07} and the measured absorption line indices to infer the single-stellar-population-equivalent (SSP-equivalent) age and [Fe/H] for each galaxy, as well as their abundance patterns in terms of [Mg/Fe], [C/Fe], [N/Fe] and [Ca/Fe]. For the passive galaxy subsample we find strong evidence for "archaeological downsizing", with age $\propto \sigma^{0.90 \pm 0.06}$. We recover significant cluster-centric radial stellar population gradients for the passive sample in SSP-equivalent age, [Mg/Fe], [C/Fe] and [N/Fe]. These trends are in the sense that, at fixed velocity dispersion, passive galaxies on the outskirts of the cluster are 24% $\pm$ 9% younger with lower [Mg/Fe] and [N/Fe] but higher [C/Fe] than those in the cluster core. We find no significant increase in cluster-centric radial stellar population gradients when fitting to a passive galaxy subset selected to cover the cluster core and South-West region, which contains the NGC 4839 subgroup. Thus we conclude that the NGC 4839 in-fall region is not unique, at least in terms of the stellar populations of bright galaxies. We speculate that the more pronounced cluster-centric radial gradients seen by other recent studies may be attributed to the luminosity range spanned by their samples, rather than to limited azimuthal coverage of the cluster.(abridged)

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James Price, Steve Phillipps, Avon Huxor, Russell J Smith, John R Lucey. 2010-10-19. The Stellar Populations of Bright Coma Cluster Galaxies. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17862.x

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