A Re-examination of Galactic Conformity and a Comparison with Semi-analytic Models of Galaxy Formation

Abstract

The observed correlation between star-formation in central galaxies and in their neighbours (a phenomenon dubbed galactic conformity) is in need of a convincing physical explanation. We use a volume-limited sample of galaxies with redshifts less than 0.03 drawn from the SDSS DR7 to investigate the scale dependence of the effect and how it changes as a function of the mass of the central galaxy. Conformity extends over a central galaxy stellar mass range spanning two orders of magnitude. In central galaxies with masses less than 10^10 M_sun, conformity extends out to scales in excess of 4 Mpc, well beyond the virial radii of their dark matter halos. For low mass central galaxies, large-scale conformity with neighbours is only seen when the centrals have low star formation rate or gas content. In contrast, at high stellar masses, conformity with neighbours applies in the gas-rich regime and is clearly confined to scales comparable to the virial radius of the dark matter halo of the central galaxy. Our analysis of a mock catalogue from the Guo et al (2011) models shows that conformity-like effects are much weaker than observed, and apply only to the low SFR/M* tail of neighbouring galaxies. In the models, the median and the upper percentiles of the SFR/M* distribution remain almost unchanged, which is in contradiction with the data. Conformity between low-mass, gas-poor central galaxies and their distant neighbours cannot be explained within the framework of halo occupation distribution (HOD) models. It is likely a signature of pre-heating of the intergalactic gas at an earlier epoch. The smaller-scale conformity between high-mass, gas-rich central galaxies and their close neighbours may be a signature of ongoing gas accretion onto central galaxies in a minority of massive dark matter halos.