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In order to study the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of galaxies we develop an automated pipeline to estimate the optical continuum of quasars and detect intervening metal absorption line systems with a matched kernel convolution technique and adaptive S/N criteria. We process $\sim$ one million quasars in the latest Data Release 16 (DR16) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and compile a large sample of $\sim$ 160,000 MgII absorbers, together with $\sim$ 70,000 FeII systems, in the redshift range $0.35, Comment: 23 pages, 20 Figures, 3 Appendices, MNRAS accepted. The MgII absorber catalogue is publicly available at https://wwwmpa.mpa-garching.mpg.de/SDSS/MgII/

We perform a comparison, object-by-object and statistically, between the Munich semi-analytical model, L-Galaxies, and the IllustrisTNG hydrodynamical simulations. By running L-Galaxies on the IllustrisTNG dark matter-only merger trees, we identify the same galaxies in the two models. This allows us to compare the stellar mass, star formation rate and gas content of galaxies, as well as the baryonic content of subhaloes and haloes in the two models. We find that both the stellar mass functions and the stellar masses of individual galaxies agree to better than $\sim0.2\,$dex. On the other hand, specific star formation rates and gas contents can differ more substantially. At $z=0$ the transition between low-mass star-forming galaxies and high-mass, quenched galaxies occurs at a stellar mass scale $\sim0.5\,$dex lower in IllustrisTNG than in L-Galaxies. IllustrisTNG also produces substantially more quenched galaxies at higher redshifts. Both models predict a halo baryon fraction close to the cosmic value for clusters, but IllustrisTNG predicts lower baryon fractions in group environments. These differences are due primarily to differences in modelling feedback from stars and supermassive black holes. The gas content and star formation rates of galaxies in and around clusters and groups differ substantially, with IllustrisTNG satellites less star-forming and less gas-rich. We show that environmental processes such as ram-pressure stripping are stronger and operate to larger distances and for a broader host mass range in IllustrisTNG. We suggest that the treatment of galaxy evolution in the semi-analytic model needs to be improved by prescriptions which capture local environmental effects more accurately., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. The catalogue of L-Galaxies run on TNG is publicly available at https://tng-project.org/ayromlou20

We introduce a Local Background Environment (LBE) estimator that can be measured in and around every galaxy or its dark matter subhalo in high-resolution cosmological simulations. The LBE is designed to capture the influence of environmental effects such as ram-pressure stripping on the formation and evolution of galaxies in semi-analytical models. We define the LBE directly from the particle data within an adaptive spherical shell, and devise a Gaussian mixture estimator to separate background particles from previously unidentified subhalo particles. Analyzing the LBE properties, we find that the LBE of satellite galaxies is not at rest with respect to their host halo, in contrast to typical assumptions. The orientations of the velocities of a subhalo and its LBE are well aligned in the outer infall regions of haloes, but decorrelated near halo center. Significantly, there is no abrupt change in LBE velocity or density at the halo virial radius. This suggests that stripping should also happen beyond this radius. Therefore, we use the time-evolving LBE of galaxies to develop a method to better account for ram-pressure stripping within the Munich semi-analytical model, L-Galaxies. Overall, our new approach results in a significant increase in gas stripping across cosmic time. Central galaxies, as well as satellites beyond the virial radius, can lose a significant fraction of their hot halo gas. As a result, the gas fractions and star formation rates of satellite galaxies are suppressed relative to the fiducial model, although the stellar masses and global stellar mass functions are largely unchanged., Submitted to MNRAS

We study an idealized one-dimensional model for the evolution of hot gas in darkmatter haloes for redshifts z = 0, 6]. We introduce a numerical set-up incorporating cosmological accretion of gas, along with the growth of the halo, based on the Van den Bosch model for the average growth of haloes as a function of cosmic time. We evolve one-dimensional Lagrangian shells with radiative cooling of the gas and heating due to feedback from the gas cooling and moving in towards the centre. A simple Bondi accretion model on to a central black hole is used to include feedback heating. The set-up captures some of the key characteristics of spherically symmetric accretion on to the haloes: formation of virial shocks slightly outside r(200) and long-term thermal balance in the form of cooling and heating cycles. The gas density outside our initial haloes at z = 6 is constrained by requiring that the baryon fraction within the virial radius for non-radiative evolution be equal to the universal value at almost all times. The total mass in the cold phase (taken to be similar to 10(4) K) within 40 kpc is tracked as a function of the halo mass and redshift. We compare the evolution of the cold gas mass to the observed stellar mass versus halo mass relations, following which, we can constrain the feedback energy required for different halo masses and redshifts. We also compare and match the hot gas density and temperature profiles for our most massive halo to those of clusters observed upto redshift 2. Our model is thus an improvement over the semi-analytic models in which isothermal condition and rho proportional to r(-2) are assumed.

We examine the stellar haloes of the Auriga simulations, a suite of thirty cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical high-resolution simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies performed with the moving-mesh code AREPO. We study halo global properties and radial profiles out to $\sim 150$ kpc for each individual galaxy. The Auriga haloes are diverse in their masses and density profiles; mean metallicity and metallicity gradients; ages; and shapes, reflecting the stochasticity inherent in their accretion and merger histories. A comparison with observations of nearby late-type galaxies shows very good agreement between most observed and simulated halo properties. However, Auriga haloes are typically too massive. We find a connection between population gradients and mass assembly history: galaxies with few significant progenitors have more massive haloes, possess large negative halo metallicity gradients and steeper density profiles. The number of accreted galaxies, either disrupted or under disruption, that contribute 90% of the accreted halo mass ranges from 1 to 14, with a median of 6.5, and their stellar masses span over three orders of magnitude. The observed halo mass--metallicity relation is well reproduced by Auriga and is set by the stellar mass and metallicity of the dominant satellite contributors. This relationship is found not only for the accreted component but also for the total (accreted + in-situ) stellar halo. Our results highlight the potential of observable halo properties to infer the assembly history of galaxies., Comment: Accepted to MNRAS. 30 pages, 19 figures

We present a modified version of the L-GALAXIES 2020 semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution, which includes significantly increased direct metal enrichment of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) by supernovae (SNe). These more metal-rich outflows do not require increased mass-loading factors, in contrast to some other galaxy evolution models. This modified L-GALAXIES 2020 model is able to simultaneously reproduce the gas-phase metallicity $(Z_{\rm g})$ and stellar metallicity $(Z_{*})$ radial profiles observed in nearby disc galaxies by MaNGA and MUSE, as well as the observed mass - metallicity relations for gas and stars at $z=0$ and their evolution back to $z\sim{}2-3$. A direct CGM enrichment fraction of $\sim{}90\%$ for SNe-II is preferred. We find that massive disc galaxies have slightly flatter $Z_{\rm g}$ profiles than their lower-mass counterparts in L-GALAXIES 2020, due to more efficient enrichment of their outskirts via inside-out growth and metal-rich accretion. Such a weak, positive correlation between stellar mass and $Z_{\rm g}$ profile slope is also seen in our MaNGA-DR15 sample of 571 star-forming disc galaxies. Although, below ${\rm log}(M_{*}/{\rm M}_{\odot})\sim{}10.0$ this observational result is strongly dependent on the metallicity diagnostic and morphological selection chosen. In addition, a lowered maximum SN-II progenitor mass of $25{\rm M}_{\odot}$, reflecting recent theoretical and observational estimates, can also provide a good match to observed metallicity profiles at $z=0$ in L-GALAXIES 2020. However, this model version fails to reproduce an evolution in $Z_{\rm g}$ at fixed mass over cosmic time, or the magnesium abundances observed in the intracluster medium (ICM)., Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. (Missing citation hyperlinks corrected)

We present a variation of the recently updated Munich semi-analytical galaxy formation model, L-Galaxies, with a new gas stripping method. Extending earlier work, we directly measure the local environmental properties of galaxies to formulate a more accurate treatment of ram-pressure stripping for all galaxies. We fully re-calibrate the modified L-Galaxies model using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method with the stellar mass function and quenched fraction of galaxies at $0\leq z\leq2$ as constraints. Due to this re-calibration, global galaxy population relations, including the stellar mass function, quenched fractions versus galaxy mass and HI mass function are all largely unchanged and remain consistent with observations. By comparing to data on galaxy properties in different environments from the SDSS and HSC surveys, we demonstrate that our modified model improves the agreement with the quenched fractions and star formation rates of galaxies as a function of environment, stellar mass, and redshift. Overall, in the vicinity of haloes with total mass $10^{12}$ to $10^{15}\rm M_{\odot}$ at $z=0$, our new model produces higher quenched fractions and stronger environmental dependencies, better recovering observed trends with halocentric distance up to several virial radii. By analysing the actual amount of gas stripped from galaxies in our model, we show that those in the vicinity of massive haloes lose a large fraction of their hot halo gas before they become satellites. We demonstrate that this affects galaxy quenching both within and beyond the halo boundary. This is likely to influence the correlations between galaxies up to tens of megaparsecs., Submitted to MNRAS. The full model output and model description are publicly available at https://lgalaxiespublicrelease.github.io

We explore the abundance, spatial distribution, and physical properties of the OVI, OVII, and OVIII ions of oxygen in circumgalactic and intergalactic media (the CGM, IGM, and WHIM). We use the TNG100 and TNG300 large volume cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical simulations. Modeling the ionization states of simulated oxygen, we find good agreement with observations of the low-redshift OVI column density distribution function (CDDF), and present its evolution for all three ions from z=0 to z=4. Producing mock quasar absorption line spectral surveys, we show that the IllustrisTNG simulations are fully consistent with constraints on the OVI content of the CGM from COS-Halos and other low redshift observations, producing columns as high as observed. We measure the total amount of mass and average column densities of each ion using hundreds of thousands of simulated galaxies spanning 10^11 < Mhalo/Msun < 10^15 corresponding to 10^9 < M*/Msun < 10^12 in stellar mass. Stacked radial profiles of OVI are computed in 3D number density and 2D projected column, decomposing into the 1-halo and 2-halo terms. Relating halo OVI to properties of the central galaxy, we find a correlation between the (g-r) color of a galaxy and the total amount of OVI in its CGM. In comparison to the COS-Halos finding, this leads to a dichotomy of columns around star-forming versus passive galaxies at fixed stellar (or halo) mass. We demonstrate that this correlation is a direct result of blackhole feedback associated with quenching and represents a causal consequence of galactic-scale baryonic feedback impacting the physical state of the circumgalactic medium., MNRAS. For an interactive OVI/OVIII visualization, see the 2D explorer at http://www.tng-project.org (fig 5 updated in v2)

We introduce the first two simulations of the IllustrisTNG project, a next generation of cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations, focusing on the optical colors of galaxies. We explore TNG100, a rerun of the original Illustris box, and TNG300, which includes 2x2500^3 resolution elements in a volume twenty times larger. Here we present first results on the galaxy color bimodality at low redshift. Accounting for the attenuation of stellar light by dust, we compare the simulated (g-r) colors of 10^9 < M*/Msun < 10^12.5 galaxies to the observed distribution from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find a striking improvement with respect to the original Illustris simulation, as well as excellent quantitative agreement in comparison to the observations, with a sharp transition in median color from blue to red at a characteristic M* ~ 10^10.5 Msun. Investigating the build-up of the color-mass plane and the formation of the red sequence, we demonstrate that the primary driver of galaxy color transition in the TNG model is supermassive blackhole feedback in its low-accretion state. Across the entire population we measure a median color transition timescale dt_green of ~1.6 Gyr, a value which drops for increasingly massive galaxies. We find signatures of the physical process of quenching: at fixed stellar mass, redder galaxies have lower SFRs, gas fractions, and gas metallicities; their stellar populations are also older and their large-scale interstellar magnetic fields weaker than in bluer galaxies. Finally, we measure the amount of stellar mass growth on the red sequence. Galaxies with M* > 10^11 Msun which redden at z, The IllustrisTNG project website is http://www.tng-project.org

Due to the fact that HI mass measurements are not available for large galaxy samples at high redshifts, we apply a photometric estimator of the HI-to-stellar mass ratio (M_HI/M_*) calibrated using a local Universe sample of galaxies to a sample of galaxies at z ~ 1 in the DEEP2 survey. We use these HI mass estimates to calculate HI mass functions (HIMFs) and cosmic HI mass densities (Omega_HI), and to examine the correlation between star formation rate and HI gas content, for galaxies at z ~ 1. We have estimated HI gas masses for ~ 7,000 galaxies in the DEEP2 survey with redshifts in the range 0.75 < z < 1.4 and stellar masses M_* > 10^{10} M_solar, using a combination of the rest-frame ultraviolet-optical colour (NUV - r) and stellar mass density (mu_*) as a way to estimate M_HI/M_*. It is found that the high mass end of high-z HI mass function (HIMF) is quite similar to that of the local HIMF. The lower limit of Omega_HI,limit = 2.1 * 10^{-4} h_70^{-1}, obtained by directly integrating the HI mass of galaxies with M_* > 10^{10} M_solar, confirms that massive star-forming galaxies do not dominate the neutral gas at z ~ 1. We study the evolution of the HI mass to stellar mass ratio from z ~ 1 to today and find a steeper relation between HI gas mass fraction and stellar mass at higher redshifts. Specifically, galaxies with M_* = 10^{11} M_solar at z ~ 1 are found to have 3 - 4 times higher neutral gas fractions than local galaxies, while the increase is as high as 4 - 12 times at M_* = 10^{10} M_solar. The quantity M_HI/SFR exhibits very large scatter, and the scatter increases from a factor of 5 - 7 at z = 0 to factors close to a hundred at z = 1. This implies that there is no relation between HI gas and star formation in high redshift galaxies. The HI gas must be linked to cosmological gas accretion processes at high redshifts., 10 pages, 13 figures, A&A accepted

We have updated the Munich galaxy formation model, L-Galaxies, to follow the radial distributions of stars and atomic and molecular gas in galaxy discs. We include an H2-based star-formation law, as well as a detailed chemical-enrichment model with explicit mass-dependent delay times for SN-II, SN-Ia and AGB stars. Information about the star formation, feedback and chemical-enrichment histories of discs is stored in 12 concentric rings. The new model retains the success of its predecessor in reproducing the observed evolution of the galaxy population, in particular, stellar mass functions and passive fractions over the redshift range 0, published in MNRAS. A full description of the model is available as MNRAS online supplementary material and at https://lgalaxiespublicrelease.github.io/. Data from the model are publicly released in SQL-queryable form and in flat files at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/millennium

We have analyzed the emission line properties of 6019 Type II AGN at redshifts between 0.4-0.8 with [OIII] luminosities greater than 3x10^8 Lsun, characteristic of the Type II quasars first identified in population studies by Zakamska et al (2003). The AGN are drawn from the CMASS sample of galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^11 Msun that were studied as part of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and comprise 0.5% of the total population of these galaxies. Individual spectra have low S/N, so the analysis is carried out on stacked spectra in bins of [OIII] luminosity and estimated stellar age. The emission line ratios of the stacks are well fit with simple uniform-density photoionization models with metallicities between solar and twice solar. In the stacks, a number of emission lines are found to have distinct broad components requiring a double Gaussian rather than a single Gaussian fit, indicative of outflowing ionized gas. These are: [OIII]4959, [OIII]5007, [OII]3727,3729 and Halpha$. Higher ionization lines such as [NeIII]3869 and [NeV]3345 are detected in the stacks, but are well fit by single Gaussians. The broad components typically contain a third of the total line flux and have widths of 600 km/s for the oxygen lines and 900 km/s for Halpha. The fraction of the flux in the broad component and its width are independent of [OIII] luminosity, stellar age, radio and mid-IR luminosity. The stellar mass of the galaxy is the only parameter we could identify that influences the width of the broad line component., 14 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The quenching of star formation in satellite galaxies is observed over a wide range of dark matter halo masses and galaxy environments. In the recent Guo et al (2011) and Fu et al (2013) semi-analytic + N-body models, the gaseous environment of the satellite galaxy is governed by the properties of the dark matter subhalo in which it resides. This quantity depends of the resolution of the N-body simulation, leading to a divergent fraction of quenched satellites in high- and low-resolution simulations. Here, we incorporate an analytic model to trace the subhaloes below the resolution limit. We demonstrate that we then obtain better converged results between the Millennium I and II simulations, especially for the satellites in the massive haloes ($\rm log M_{halo}=[14,15]$). We also include a new physical model for the ram-pressure stripping of cold gas in satellite galaxies. However, we find very clear discrepancies with observed trends in quenched satellite galaxy fractions as a function of stellar mass at fixed halo mass. At fixed halo mass, the quenched fraction of satellites does not depend on stellar mass in the models, but increases strongly with mass in the data. In addition to the over-prediction of low-mass passive satellites, the models also predict too few quenched central galaxies with low stellar masses, so the problems in reproducing quenched fractions are not purely of environmental origin. Further improvements to the treatment of the gas-physical processes regulating the star formation histories of galaxies are clearly necessary to resolve these problems., 15 papes, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 361 (4), ISSN:0035-8711, ISSN:1365-2966, ISSN:1365-8711

We use long-slit spectroscopy from Moran et al. to study the radial dependence of the recent star formation histories of nearby galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10M_sun. We fit stellar population models to the combination of SSFR, D4000 and Hdelta_A and show that many galaxies have Balmer absorption line equivalent widths that require recent short-lived episodes or bursts of star formation. The fraction of galaxies that have experienced episodic rather than continuous star formation is highest for late-type galaxies with low stellar masses. In these systems, bursts occur both in the inner and outer regions of the galaxy. The fraction of stars formed in a single burst episode is typically around 15% of the total stellar mass in the inner regions of the galaxy and around 5% of the mass in the outer regions. When we average over the population, we find that such bursts contribute around a half of the total mass in stars formed in the last 2 Gyr. In massive galaxies, bursts occur predominantly in the outer disk. Around a third of all massive, bulge-dominated galaxies have experienced recent star formation episodes that are fully confined to their outer (R > 0.7R_90) regions. The fraction of stars formed in a single episode is only 2 - 3 % of the underlying stellar mass, but such bursts contribute nearly all the stellar mass formed in the last 2 Gyr. Recent star formation in outer disks is strongly correlated with the global atomic gas fraction of the galaxy, but not its global molecular gas fraction. We suggest that outer episodic star formation is triggered by gas accretion events., title modified, colors of bar plot changed, typos corrected, published in MNRAS

The goal of this paper is to investigate the physical nature of galaxies in the redshift range $0.02, Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures, accepted in MNRAS

We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two different prescriptions based either on gas surface density and metallicity, or on interstellar pressure, to compute the molecular fraction as a function of radius in each disk. We demonstrate that the adopted star formation law determines how the {\em balance} between gas, stars and metals changes with time in the star-forming galaxy population, but does not influence the total mass in stars formed into galaxies at redshifts below $z\sim 2.5$. The redshift evolution of the mass-metallicity relation places strong constraints on the timescale over which cold gas is converted into stars in high redshift galaxies, and favours models where this remains constant at values around 1-2 Gyr. Future observations of the evolution of the average molecular-to-atomic gas ratio in galaxies as a function of stellar mass and redshift will constrain models of the atomic-to-molecular transition.

We introduce a new photometric estimator of the HI mass fraction (M_HI/M_*) in local galaxies, which is a linear combination of four parameters: stellar mass, stellar surface mass density, NUV-r colour, and g-i colour gradient. It is calibrated using samples of nearby galaxies (0.025

We compare the semi-analytic models of galaxy formation of Fu et al. (2010), which track the evolution of the radial profiles of atomic and molecular gas in galaxies, with gas fraction scaling relations derived from the COLD GASS survey (Saintonge et al 2011). The models provide a good description of how condensed baryons in galaxies with gas are partitioned into stars, atomic and molecular gas as a function of galaxy stellar mass and surface density. The models do not reproduce the tight observed relation between stellar surface density and bulge-to-disk ratio for this population. We then turn to an analysis of the"quenched" population of galaxies without detectable cold gas. The current implementation of radio-mode feedback in the models disagrees strongly with the data. In the models, gas cooling shuts down in nearly all galaxies in dark matter halos above a mass of 10**12 M_sun. As a result, stellar mass is the observable that best predicts whether a galaxy has little or no neutral gas. In contrast, our data show that quenching is largely independent of stellar mass. Instead, there are clear thresholds in bulge-to-disk ratio and in stellar surface density that demarcate the location of quenched galaxies. We propose that processes associated with bulge formation play a key role in depleting the neutral gas in galaxies and that further gas accretion is suppressed following the formation of the bulge, even in dark matter halos of low mass.

We study relations between stellar mass, star formation and gas-phase metallicity in a sample of 177,071 unique emission line galaxies from the SDSS-DR7, as well as in a sample of 43,767 star forming galaxies at z=0 from the cosmological semi-analytic model L-GALAXIES. We demonstrate that metallicity is dependent on star formation rate at fixed mass, but that the trend is opposite for low and for high mass galaxies. Low-mass galaxies that are actively forming stars are more metal-poor than quiescent low-mass galaxies. High-mass galaxies, on the other hand, have lower gas-phase metallicities if their star formation rates are small. Remarkably, the same trends are found for our sample of model galaxies. We find that massive model galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities have undergone a gas-rich merger in the past, inducing a starburst which exhausted their cold gas reservoirs and shut down star formation. This led to a gradual dilution in the gas-phase metallicities of these systems via accretion of gas. These model galaxies have lower-than-average gas-to-stellar mass ratios and higher-than-average central black hole masses. We confirm that massive galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities in our observational sample also have very massive black holes. We propose that accretion may therefore play a significant role in regulating the gas-phase metallicities of present-day massive galaxies.

We present dynamical scaling relations for a homogeneous and representative sample of ~500 massive galaxies, selected only by stellar mass (>10^10 Msun) and redshift (0.025

We present measurements of projected autocorrelation functions w_p(r_p) for the stellar mass of galaxies and for their light in the U, B and V bands, using data from the third data release of the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey and the final data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We investigate the clustering bias of stellar mass and light by comparing these to projected autocorrelations of dark matter estimated from the Millennium Simulations (MS) at z=1 and 0.07, the median redshifts of our galaxy samples. All of the autocorrelation and bias functions show systematic trends with spatial scale and waveband which are impressively similar at the two redshifts. This shows that the well-established environmental dependence of stellar populations in the local Universe is already in place at z=1. The recent MS-based galaxy formation simulation of Guo et al. (2011) reproduces the scale-dependent clustering of luminosity to an accuracy better than 30% in all bands and at both redshifts, but substantially overpredicts mass autocorrelations at separations below about 2 Mpc. Further comparison of the shapes of our stellar mass bias functions with those predicted by the model suggests that both the SDSS and DEEP2 data prefer a fluctuation amplitude of sigma_8 0.8 rather than the sigma_8=0.9 assumed by the MS.

We use a stacking technique to measure the average H I content of a volume-limited sample of 1871 active galactic nucleus (AGN) host galaxies from a parent sample of galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and GALEX imaging surveys with stellar masses greater than 10 10 Mand redshifts in the range 0.025 < z < 0.05. H I data are available from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey. In previous work, we found that the H I gas fraction in galaxies correlates most strongly with the combination of optical/ultraviolet colour and stellar surface mass density. We therefore build a control sample of non-AGN matched to the AGN hosts in these two properties. We study trends in H I gas mass fraction (MH I/M� , where Mis the stellar mass) as a function of black hole accretion rate indicator L(O III)/MBH. We find no significant difference in H I content between AGN and control samples at all values of black hole accretion rate probed by the galaxies in our sample. This indicates that AGN do not influence the large-scale gaseous properties of galaxies in the local Universe. We have studied the variation in H I mass fraction with black hole accretion rate in the blue and red galaxy populations. In the blue population, the H I gas fraction is independent of accretion rate, indicating that accretion is not sensitive to the properties of the interstellar medium of the galaxy on large scales. However, in the red population accretion rate and gas fraction do correlate. The measured gas fractions in this population are not too different from the ones expected from a stellar mass-loss origin, implying that the fuel supply in the red AGN population could be a mixture of mass-loss from stars and gas present in discs.

We are conducting COLD GASS, a legacy survey for molecular gas in nearby galaxies. Using the IRAM 30m telescope, we measure the CO(1-0) line in a sample of ~350 nearby (D=100-200 Mpc), massive galaxies (log(M*/Msun)>10.0). The sample is selected purely according to stellar mass, and therefore provides an unbiased view of molecular gas in these systems. By combining the IRAM data with SDSS photometry and spectroscopy, GALEX imaging and high-quality Arecibo HI data, we investigate the partition of condensed baryons between stars, atomic gas and molecular gas in 0.1-10L* galaxies. In this paper, we present CO luminosities and molecular hydrogen masses for the first 222 galaxies. The overall CO detection rate is 54%, but our survey also uncovers the existence of sharp thresholds in galaxy structural parameters such as stellar mass surface density and concentration index, below which all galaxies have a measurable cold gas component but above which the detection rate of the CO line drops suddenly. The mean molecular gas fraction MH2/M* of the CO detections is 0.066+/-0.039, and this fraction does not depend on stellar mass, but is a strong function of NUV-r colour. Through stacking, we set a firm upper limit of MH2/M*=0.0016+/-0.0005 for red galaxies with NUV-r>5.0. The average molecular-to-atomic hydrogen ratio in present-day galaxies is 0.3, with significant scatter from one galaxy to the next. The existence of strong detection thresholds in both the HI and CO lines suggests that "quenching" processes have occurred in these systems. Intriguingly, atomic gas strongly dominates in the minority of galaxies with significant cold gas that lie above these thresholds. This suggests that some re-accretion of gas may still be possible following the quenching event.

We study the relation between molecular gas and star formation in a volume-limited sample of 222 galaxies from the COLD GASS survey, with measurements of the CO(1-0) line from the IRAM 30m telescope. The galaxies are at redshifts 0.025

We apply updated semi-analytic galaxy formation models simultaneously to the stored halo/subhalo merger trees of the Millennium and Millennium-II simulations. These differ by a factor of 125 in mass resolution, allowing explicit testing of resolution effects on predicted galaxy properties. We have revised the treatments of the transition between the rapid infall and cooling flow regimes of gas accretion, of the sizes of bulges and of gaseous and stellar disks, of supernova feedback, of the transition between central and satellite status as galaxies fall into larger systems, and of gas and star stripping once they become satellites. Plausible values of efficiency and scaling parameters yield an excellent fit not only to the observed abundance of low-redshift galaxies over 5 orders of magnitude in stellar mass and 9 magnitudes in luminosity, but also to the observed abundance of Milky Way satellites. This suggests that reionisation effects may not be needed to solve the "missing satellite" problem except, perhaps, for the faintest objects. The same model matches the observed large-scale clustering of galaxies as a function of stellar mass and colour. The fit remains excellent down to ~30kpc for massive galaxies. For M* < 6 x 10^10Msun, however, the model overpredicts clustering at scales below 1 Mpc, suggesting that the sigma_8 adopted in the simulations (0.9) is too high. Galaxy distributions within rich clusters agree between the simulations and match those observed, but only if galaxies without dark matter subhalos (so-called orphans) are included. Our model predicts a larger passive fraction among low-mass galaxies than is observed, as well as an overabundance of ~10^10Msun galaxies beyond z~0.6, reflecting deficiencies in the way star-formation rates are modelled.

We have carried out an HI stacking analysis of a volume-limited sample of ~5000 galaxies with imaging and spectroscopic data from GALEX and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which lie within the current footprint of the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) Survey. Our galaxies are selected to have stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts in the range 0.025 2.6 and with light profiles that are well fit by a De Vaucouleurs model. We then stack HI line spectra extracted from the ALFALFA data cubes at the 3-D positions of the galaxies from these two samples in bins of stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, central velocity dispersion, and NUV-r colour. We use the stacked spectra to estimate the average HI gas fractions M_HI/M_* of the galaxies in each bin. Our main result is that the HI content of a galaxy is not influenced by its bulge. The average HI gas fractions of galaxies in both our samples correlate most strongly with NUV-r colour and with stellar surface density. The relation between average HI fraction and these two parameters is independent of concentration index C. We have tested whether the average HI gas content of bulge-dominated galaxies on the red sequence, differs from that of late-type galaxies on the red sequence. We find no evidence that galaxies with a significant bulge component are less efficient at turning their available gas reservoirs into stars. This result is in contradiction with the "morphological quenching" scenario proposed by Martig et al. (2009).

We have compiled a large sample of isolated central galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which do not have a neighbour of comparable brightness within a projected distance of 1 Mpc. We use the colours, luminosities and surface brightnesses of satellite galaxies in the vicinity of these objects to estimate their atomic gas content and to derive the average total mass of HI gas contained in satellites as a function of projected radius from the primary. Recent calibrations of merging timescales from N-body simulations are used to estimate the rate at which this gas will accrete onto the primaries. Our estimated accretion rates fall short of those needed to maintain the observed level of star formation in these systems by nearly two orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, there are strong correlations between the total mass of gas in satellites and the colours and specific star formation rates of central galaxies of all stellar masses. The correlations are much weaker if we consider the total stellar mass in the satellites, rather than their total gas mass. We ask why star formation in the central galaxies should be correlated with gas contained in satellites at projected separations of a Mpc or more, well outside the virial radius of the dark matter halos of these systems. We suggest that gas-rich satellites trace an underlying reservoir of ionized gas that is accreted continuously, and that provides the fuel for ongoing star formation in galaxies in the local Universe.

We extend existing semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to track atomic and molecular gas in disk galaxies. Simple recipes for processes such as cooling, star formation, supernova feedback, and chemical enrichment of the stars and gas are grafted on to dark matter halo merger trees derived from the Millennium Simulation. Each galactic disk is represented by a series of concentric rings. We assume that surface density profile of infalling gas in a dark matter halo is exponential, with scale radius r_d that is proportional to the virial radius of the halo times its spin parameter $\lambda$. As the dark matter haloes grow through mergers and accretion, disk galaxies assemble from the inside out. We include two simple prescriptions for molecular gas formation processes in our models: one is based on the analytic calculations by Krumholz, McKee & Tumlinson (2008), and the other is a prescription where the H_2 fraction is determined by the kinematic pressure of the ISM. Motivated by the observational results of Leroy et al. (2008), we adopt a star formation law in which $\Sigma_{SFR}\propto\Sigma_{H_2}$ in the regime where the molecular gas dominates the total gas surface density, and $\Sigma_{SFR}\propto \Sigma_{gas}^2$ where atomic hydrogen dominates. We then fit these models to the radial surface density profiles of stars, HI and H_2 drawn from recent high resolution surveys of stars and gas in nearby galaxies. We explore how the ratios of atomic gas, molecular gas and stellar mass vary as a function of global galaxy scale parameters, including stellar mass, stellar surface density, and gas surface density. We elucidate how the trends can be understood in terms of three variables that determine the partition of baryons in disks: the mass of the dark matter halo, the spin parameter of the halo, and the amount of gas recently accreted from the external environment.

We use measurements of the HI content, stellar mass and star formation rates in ~190 massive galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun, obtained from the Galex Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS) described in Paper I (Catinella et al. 2010) to explore the global scaling relations associated with the bin-averaged ratio of the star formation rate over the HI mass, which we call the HI-based star formation efficiency (SFE). Unlike the mean specific star formation rate, which decreases with stellar mass and stellar mass surface density, the star formation efficiency remains relatively constant across the sample with a value close to SFE = 10^-9.5 yr^-1 (or an equivalent gas consumption timescale of ~3 Gyr). Specifically, we find little variation in SFE with stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, NUV-r color and concentration. We interpret these results as an indication that external processes or feedback mechanisms that control the gas supply are important for regulating star formation in massive galaxies. An investigation into the detailed distribution of SFEs reveals that approximately 5% of the sample shows high efficiencies with SFE > 10^-9 yr^-1, and we suggest that this is very likely due to a deficiency of cold gas rather than an excess star formation rate. Conversely, we also find a similar fraction of galaxies that appear to be gas-rich for their given specific star-formation rate, although these galaxies show both a higher than average gas fraction and lower than average specific star formation rate. Both of these populations are plausible candidates for "transition" galaxies, showing potential for a change (either decrease or increase) in their specific star formation rate in the near future. We also find that 36+/-5% of the total HI mass density and 47+/-5% of the total SFR density is found in galaxies with stellar mass greater than 10^10 Msun. [abridged]

We report new observations of the galaxy UGC8802 obtained through GASS, the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey, which show this galaxy to be in a remarkable evolutionary state. UGC8802 (GASS35981) is a disk galaxy with stellar mass M*=2x10^10 Msolar which appears to contain an additional 2.1x10^10 Msolar of HI gas. New millimeter observations with the IRAM 30m telescope indicate a molecular gas mass only a tenth this large. Using deep long-slit spectroscopy, we examine the spatially resolved star formation rate and metallicity profiles of GASS35981 for clues to its history. We find that the star formation surface density in this galaxy is low (Sigma_SFR=0.003 Msolar/yr/kpc^2) and that the star formation is spread remarkably evenly across the galaxy. The low molecular gas masses measured in our three IRAM pointings are largely consistent with the total star formation measured within the same apertures. Our MMT long-slit spectrum reveals a sharp drop in metallicity in the outer disk of GASS35981. The ratio of current star formation rate to existing stellar mass surface density in the outer disk is extremely high, implying that all the stars must have formed within the past ~1Gyr. At current star formation rates, however, GASS35981 will not consume its HI reservoir for another 5-7 Gyr. Despite its exceptionally large gas fraction for a galaxy this massive, GASS35981 has a regular rotation curve and exhibits no sign of a recent interaction or merger. We speculate that GASS35981 may have acquired its gas directly from the inter-galactic medium, and that it and other similar galaxies identified in the GASS survey may provide rare local glimpses of gas accretion processes that were more common during the prime epoch of disk galaxy formation at z~1., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, typo fixed

We analyze star forming galaxies drawn from SDSS DR7 to show how the interstellar medium (ISM) Na I 5890, 5896 (Na D) absorption lines depend on galaxy physical properties, and to look for evidence of galactic winds. We combine the spectra of galaxies with similar geometry/physical parameters to create composite spectra with signal-to-noise ~300. The stellar continuum is modeled using stellar population synthesis models, and the continuum-normalized spectrum is fit with two Na I absorption components. We find that: (1) ISM Na D absorption lines with equivalent widths EW > 0.8A are only prevalent in disk galaxies with specific properties -- large extinction (Av), high star formation rates (SFR), high star formation rate per unit area ($\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$), or high stellar mass (M*). (2) the ISM Na D absorption lines can be separated into two components: a quiescent disk-like component at the galaxy systemic velocity and an outflow component; (3) the disk-like component is much stronger in the edge-on systems, and the outflow component covers a wide angle but is stronger within 60deg of the disk rotation axis; (4) the EW and covering factor of the disk component correlate strongly with dust attenuation, highlighting the importance that dust shielding may play the survival of Na I. (5) The EW of the outflow component depends primarily on $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ and secondarily on Av; (6) the outflow velocity varies from ~120 to 160km/s but shows little hint of a correlation with galaxy physical properties over the modest dynamic range that our sample probes (1.2 dex in log$\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ and 1 dex in log M*)., Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, accepted by AJ

We introduce the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an on-going large program that is gathering high quality HI-line spectra using the Arecibo radio telescope for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts 0.025

We study the clustering properties of barred galaxies using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We compute projected redshift-space two-point cross-correlation functions w_p(r_p) for a sample of nearly 1000 galaxies for which we have performed detailed structural decompositions using the methods described in Gadotti (2009). The sample includes 286 barred galaxies. The clustering of barred and unbarred galaxies of similar stellar mass is indistinguishable over all the scales probed (~20kpc - 30Mpc). This result also holds even if the sample is restricted to bars with bluer g-i colours (and hence younger ages). Our result also does not change if we split our sample of barred galaxies according to bar-to-total luminosity ratio, bar boxyness, effective surface brightness, length, or the shape of the surface density profile within the bar. There is a hint that red, elliptical bars are more strongly clustered than red and less elliptical bars, on scales >~ 1 Mpc, although the statistical significance is not high. We conclude that there is no significant evidence that bars are a product of mergers or interactions. We tentatively interpret the stronger clustering of the more elliptical bars as evidence that they are located in older galaxies, which reside in more massive haloes., 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, a new section is added to examine the dependence on local density

We compute two-point correlation functions and measure the shear signal due to galaxy-galaxy lensing for 80,000 optically identified and 5,700 radio-loud AGN from Data Release 4 (DR4) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Halo occupation models are used to estimate halo masses and satellite fractions for these two types of AGN. The large sample size allows us to separate AGN according to the stellar mass of their host galaxies. We study how the halo masses of optical and radio AGN differ from those of the parent population at fixed M*. Halo masses deduced from clustering and from lensing agree satisfactorily. Radio AGN are found in more massive halos than optical AGN: in our samples their mean halo masses are 1.6 x 10^{13} and 8 x 10^{11} M_{sun}/h, respectively. Optical AGN follow the same relation between stellar mass and halo mass as galaxies selected without regard to nuclear properties, but radio-loud AGN deviate significantly from this relation. The dark matter halos of radio-loud AGN are about twice as massive as those of control galaxies of the same stellar mass. This boost is independent of radio luminosity, and persists even when our analysis is restricted to field galaxies. The large-scale gaseous environment of the galaxy clearly plays a crucial role in producing observable radio emission. The dark matter halo masses that we derive for the AGN in our two samples are in good agreement with recent models in which feedback from radio AGN becomes dominant in halos where gas cools quasi-statically., Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRAS; version 2 includes minor changes in response to referee report, but no substantive changes in conclusions

We report on the properties of a sample of ultraviolet-luminous galaxies (UVLGs) selected by matching the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) All-Sky Imaging and Medium Imaging Surveys with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey third data release. The overlap between these two surveys is roughly 450 deg^2. Of 25,362 galaxies (with SDSS spectroscopy) in the range 0.0 < z < 0.3 detected by GALEX, there are 215 galaxies with L > 2 × 10^(10) L_☉ at 1530 Å (observed wavelength). The properties of this population are well correlated with ultraviolet surface brightness. We find that the galaxies with low UV surface brightness are primarily large spiral systems with a mixture of old and young stellar populations, while the high surface brightness galaxies consist primarily of compact starburst systems, with an approximate boundary at a surface brightness of I_(1530) = 10^8 L_☉ kpc^(−2). The large galaxies appear to be the high-luminosity tail of the galaxy star formation function and owe their large luminosity to their large surface area. In terms of the behavior of surface brightness with luminosity, size with luminosity, the mass-metallicity relation, and other parameters, the compact UVLGs clearly depart from the trends established by the full sample of galaxies. The subset of compact UVLGs with the highest surface brightness (I_(1530) > 10^9 L_☉ kpc^(−2); "supercompact UVLGs") have characteristics that are remarkably similar to Lyman break galaxies at higher redshift. They are much more luminous (and thus have much higher star formation rates) than typical local ultraviolet-bright starburst galaxies and blue compact dwarf galaxies. They have metallicities that are systematically lower than normal galaxies of the same stellar mass, indicating that they are less chemically evolved. In all these respects, they are the best local analogs for Lyman break galaxies.

We derive average flux corrections to the \texttt{Model} magnitudes of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxies by stacking together mosaics of similar galaxies in bins of stellar mass and concentration. Extra flux is detected in the outer low surface brightness part of the galaxies, leading to corrections ranging from 0.05 to 0.32 mag for the highest stellar mass galaxies. We apply these corrections to the MPA-JHU (Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics - John Hopkins University) stellar masses for a complete sample of half a million galaxies from the SDSS survey to derive a corrected galaxy stellar mass function at $z=0.1$ in the stellar mass range $9.5, Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, Accepted to MNRAS

Two explanations have been put forward to explain the observed conformity between the colours and specific star formation rates (SFR/$M_*$) of galaxies on large scales: 1) the formation times of their surrounding dark matter halos are correlated (commonly referred to as "assembly bias"), 2) gas is heated over large scales at early times, leading to coherent modulation of cooling and star formation between well-separated galaxies (commonly referred to as "pre-heating") . To distinguish between the pre-heating and assembly bias scenarios, we search for relics of energetic feedback events in the neighbourhood of central galaxies with different specific star formation rates. We find a significant excess of very high mass ($\log M_* > 11.3$) galaxies out to a distance of 2.5 Mpc around low SFR/$M_*$ central galaxies compared to control samples of higher SFR/$M_*$ central galaxies with the same stellar mass and redshift. We also find that very massive galaxies in the neighbourhood of low SFR/$M_*$ galaxies have much higher probability of hosting radio loud active galactic nuclei. The radio-loud AGN fraction in neighbours with $\log M_* > 11.3$ is four times higher around passive, non star-forming centrals at projected distances of 1 Mpc and two times higher at projected distances of 4 Mpc. Finally, we carry out an investigation of conformity effects in the recently publicly-released Illustris cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, which includes energetic input both from quasars and from radio mode accretion onto black holes. We do not find conformity effects of comparable amplitude on large scales in the simulations and we propose that gas needs to be pushed out of dark matter halos more efficiently at high redshifts., 8 pages, 8 figures, submitted to MNRAS

We have analyzed the clustering of ~ 90,000 narrow-line AGN drawn from the Data Release 4 (DR4) of the SDSS. We compute the cross-correlation between AGN and a reference sample of galaxies, and compare this to results for control samples of inactive galaxies matched simultaneously in redshift,stellar mass,concentration, velocity dispersion and the 4000A break strength. We also compare near-neighbour counts around AGN and around the control galaxies. On scales larger than a few Mpc, AGN have almost the same clustering amplitude as the control sample. This demonstrates that AGN host galaxies and inactive galaxies populate dark matter halos of similar mass.On scales between 100kpc and 1Mpc,AGN are clustered more weakly than the control galaxies. We use mock catalogues constructed from high-resolution N-body simulations to interpret this anti-bias, showing that the observed effect is easily understood if AGN are preferentially located at the centres of their dark matter halos. On scales less than 70 kpc, AGN cluster marginally more strongly than the control sample, but the effect is weak. When compared to the control sample, we find that only one in a hundred AGN has an extra neighbour within a radius of 70 kpc. This excess increases as a function of the accretion rate onto the black hole, but it does not rise above the few percent level. Although interactions between galaxies may be responsible for triggering nuclear activity in a minority of nearby AGN, some other mechanism is required to explain the activity seen in the majority of the objects in our sample. (abridged), 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRAS, Fig.2 redrawn and text slightly changed

Current emission-line based estimates of the metallicity of active galactic nuclei (AGN) at both high and low redshifts indicate that AGN have predominantly solar to supersolar metallicities. This leads to the question: do low metallicity AGN exist? In this paper we use photoionization models to examine the effects of metallicity variations on the narrow emission lines from an AGN. We explore a variety of emission-line diagnostics that are useful for identifying AGN with low metallicity gas. We find that line ratios involving [NII] are the most robust metallicity indicators in galaxies where the primary source of ionization is from the active nucleus. Ratios involving [SII] and [OI] are strongly affected by uncertainties in modelling the density structure of the narrow line clouds. To test our diagnostics, we turn to an analysis of AGN in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find a clear trend in the relative strength of [NII] with the mass of the AGN host galaxy. The metallicity of the ISM is known to be correlated with stellar mass in star-forming galaxies; our results indicate that a similar trend exists for AGN. We also find that the best-fit models for typical Seyfert narrow line regions have supersolar abundances. Although there is a mass-dependent range of a factor of 2-3 in the NLR metallicities of the AGN in our sample, AGN with sub-solar metallicities are very rare in the SDSS. Out of a sample of ~23000 Seyfert 2 galaxies we find only ~40 clear candidates for AGN with NLR abundances that are below solar.

We use the Millennium Simulation, a 10 billion particle simulation of the growth of cosmic structure, to construct a new model of galaxy clustering. We adopt a methodology that falls midway between the traditional semi-analytic approach and the halo occupation distribution(HOD) approach. In our model, we adopt the positions and velocities of the galaxies that are predicted by following the orbits and merging histories of the substructures in the simulation. Rather than using star formation and feedback `recipes' to specify the physical properties of the galaxies, we adopt parametrized functions to relate these properties to the quantity M_{infall}, defined as the mass of the halo at the epoch when the galaxy was last the central dominant object in its own halo. We test whether these parametrized relations allow us to recover the basic statistical properties of galaxies in the semi-analytic catalogues, including the luminosity function, the stellar mass function and the shape and amplitude of the two-point correlation function evaluated in different stellar mass and luminosity ranges. We then use our model to interpret recent measurements of these quantities from Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. We derive relations between the luminosities and the stellar masses of galaxies in the local Universe and their host halo masses. Our results are in excellent agreement with recent determinations of these relations by Mandelbaum et al using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing measurements from the SDSS., 12 pages, 11 figures, published version

The relationship between galaxies and dark matter can be characterized by the halo mass of the central galaxy and the fraction of galaxies that are satellites. Here we present observational constraints from the SDSS on these quantities as a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, with a total of 351,507 lenses. We use stellar masses derived from spectroscopy and virial halo masses derived from weak gravitational lensing to determine the efficiency with which baryons in the halo of the central galaxy have been converted into stars. We find that an L* galaxy with a stellar mass of 6x10^{10} M_{sun} is hosted by a halo with mass of 1.4x10^{12} M_{sun}/h, independent of morphology, yielding baryon conversion efficiencies of 17_{-5}^{+10} (early types) and 16_{-6}^{+15} (late types) per cent at the 95 per cent CL (statistical, not including systematic uncertainty due to assumption of a universal initial mass function, or IMF). We find that for a given stellar mass, the halo mass is independent of morphology below M_{stellar}=10^{11} M_{sun}, in contrast to typically a factor of two difference in halo mass between ellipticals and spirals at a fixed luminosity. This suggests that stellar mass is a good proxy for halo mass in this range and should be used preferentially whenever a halo mass selected sample is needed. For higher stellar masses, the conversion efficiency is a declining function of stellar mass, and the differences in halo mass between early and late types become larger, reflecting the fact that most group and cluster halos with masses above 10^{13} M_{sun} host ellipticals at the center, while even the brightest central spirals are hosted by halos of mass below 10^{13} M_{sun}. (Abridged)

(abridged) We present measurements of the pairwise velocity dispersion (PVD) for different classes of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For a sample of about 200,000 galaxies, we study the dependence of the PVD on galaxy properties such as luminosity, stellar mass (M_*), colour (g-r), 4000A break strength (D4000), concentration index (C), and stellar surface mass density (\mu_*). The luminosity dependence of the PVD is in good agreement with the results of Jing & B\"orner (2004) for the 2dFGRS catalog. The value of \sigma_{12} measured at k=1 h/Mpc decreases as a function of increasing galaxy luminosity for galaxies fainter than L*, before increasing again for the most luminous galaxies in our sample. Each of the galaxy subsamples selected according to luminosity or stellar mass is divided into two further subsamples according to colour, D4000, C and \mu_*. We find that galaxies with redder colours and higher D4000, C, and \mu_* values have larger PVDs on all scales and at all luminosities/stellar masses. The dependence of the PVD on parameters related to recent star formation(colour, D4000) is stronger than on parameters related to galaxy structure (C, \mu_*), especially on small scales and for faint galaxies. The reddest galaxies and galaxies with high surface mass densities and intermediate concentrations have the highest pairwise peculiar velocities, i.e. these move in the strongest gravitational fields. We conclude that the faint red population located in rich clusters is responsible for the high PVD values that are measured for low-luminosity galaxies on small scales., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures; reference updated and text slightly changed to match the published version; data of measurements of power spectrum and PVD available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~leech/papers/clustering/

We study the recent star formation histories of local galaxies by analyzing the scatter in their colours and spectral properties. We present evidence that the distribution of star formation histories changes qualitatively above a characteristic stellar surface mass density of 3x10^8 M_sol kpc^-2, corresponding to the transition between disk-dominated and bulge-dominated galaxies. When we average over subpopulations of galaxies with densities below this value, we find that subpopulations of all masses form their stars at the same average rate per unit stellar mass. However, the scatter in galaxy colours and emission line strengths is larger for more compact galaxies of a given mass. This suggests that star formation occurs in shorter, higher amplitude events in galaxies with smaller sizes. Above the characteristic density, galaxy growth through star formation shuts down. We propose that star formation events are triggered when cold gas is accreted onto a galaxy. We have used the new high resolution Millennium Simulation of structure formation in a concordance LCDM Universe to quantify the incidence of these accretion events and we show that the observational data are well fit by a model in which the consumption time of accreted gas decreases with the surface density of the galaxy as t_cons \propto mu*^-1. The dark matter halos hosting massive galaxies with high densities are also expected to grow through accretion, but the observations indicate that star formation in bulge- dominated galaxies is no longer coupled to the hierarchical build-up of their surrounding dark matter halos., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. Note that galaxy physical parameters for DR4 (masses, metallicities, SFR, AGN catalog) are now available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/SDSS/

We have compiled a sample of 2728 nearby ($z, Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, accepted by MNRAS

We take advantage of the largest high-resolution simulation of cosmic structure growth ever carried out -- the Millennium Simulation of the concordance LambdaCDM cosmogony -- to study how the star formation histories, ages and metallicities of elliptical galaxies depend on environment and on stellar mass. We concentrate on a galaxy formation model which is tuned to fit the joint luminosity/colour/morphology distribution of low redshift galaxies. Massive ellipticals in this model have higher metal abundances, older luminosity-weighted ages, shorter star formation timescales, but lower assembly redshifts than less massive systems. Within clusters the typical masses, ages and metal abundances of ellipticals are predicted to decrease, on average, with increasing distance from the cluster centre. We also quantify the effective number of progenitors of ellipticals as a function of present stellar mass, finding typical numbers below 2 for M* < 10^{11} Msun, rising to about 5 for the most massive systems. These findings are consistent with recent observational results that suggest ``down-sizing'' or ``anti-hierarchical'' behaviour for the star formation history of the elliptical galaxy population, despite the fact that our model includes all the standard elements of hierarchical galaxy formation and is implemented on the standard, LambdaCDM cosmogony., 12 pages, 11 figures, minor revisions, MNRAS accepted

A sample of 2712 radio-luminous galaxies is defined from the second data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by cross-comparing the main spectroscopic galaxy sample with two radio surveys: the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty centimetres (FIRST) survey. The comparison is carried out in a multi-stage process and makes optimal use of both radio surveys by exploiting the sensitivity of the NVSS to extended and multi-component radio sources in addition to the high angular resolution of the FIRST images. A radio source sample with 95% completeness and 98.9% reliability is achieved, far better than would be possible for this sample if only one of the surveys was used. The radio source sample is then divided into two classes: radio-loud AGN and galaxies in which the radio emission is dominated by star formation. The division is based on the location of a galaxy in the plane of 4000Ang break strength versus radio luminosity per unit stellar mass and provides a sample of 2215 radio-loud AGN and 497 star forming galaxies brighter than 5mJy at 1.4GHz. A full catalogue of positions and radio properties is provided for these sources. The local radio luminosity function is then derived both for radio-loud AGN and for star-forming galaxies and is found to be in agreement with previous studies. By using the radio to far-IR correlation, the radio luminosity function of star forming galaxies is also compared to the luminosity function derived in the far-infrared. It is found to agree well at high luminosities but less so at lower luminosities, confirming that the linearity of the radio to far-IR correlation breaks down below about 10^22 W/Hz at 1.4GHz.

We investigate the accretion-driven growth of supermassive black holes in the low-redshift Universe using 23,000 ``Type 2'' AGN and the complete sample of 123,000 galaxies in the SDSS from which they were drawn. We use the stellar velocity dispersions of the early type galaxies and AGN hosts to estimate their black hole masses and we use the AGN [OIII]5007 emission line luminosities to estimate black hole accretion rates. We find that most present-day accretion occurs onto black holes with masses < 10E8 Msun that reside in moderately massive galaxies (M ~ 10E10 to 10E11.5 Msun) with high stellar densities (~10E8.5 to 10E9.5 Msun/kpc^2) and young stellar populations. The volume-averaged accretion rates of low mass black holes (

We use a complete sample of galaxies drawn from the SDSS to study how structure, star formation and nuclear activity depend on local density and on stellar mass. Local density is estimated by counting galaxies above a fixed absolute magnitude limit within cylinders 2 Mpc in projected radius and +-500 km/s in depth. The stellar mass distribution of galaxies shifts by nearly a factor of two towards higher masses between low and high density regions. At fixed stellar mass, both star formation and nuclear activity depend strongly on local density, while structural parameters such as size and concentration are almost independent of it. The galaxy property most sensitive to environment is specific star formation rate. For galaxies with stellar masses less than 3 x 10^10 M_sun, the median SFR/M* decreases by more than a factor of 10 from low to high densities. This decrease is less marked for massive galaxies. At fixed stellar mass, twice as many galaxies host AGN with strong [OIII] emission in low density regions as in high. Massive galaxies in low-density environments also contain more dust. We have analyzed correlations between spectroscopic indicators that probe SFH on different timescales (D4000, Hdelta_A and SFR/M*). The correlations do not depend on environment, suggesting that the decrease in star formation has ocurred over long (>1 Gyr) timescales. Since structure does not depend on environment for more massive galaxies, trends in recent SFH, dust and AGN for these systems cannot be driven by processes that alter structure, e.g. mergers. The SFH-density correlation is strongest for small scale (< 1 Mpc) estimates of local density. Finally, we highlight a striking similarity between changes in the galaxy population as a function of density and as a function of redshift and we interpret this using N-body simulations.

We develop a new method to constrain the star formation histories, dust attenuation and stellar masses of galaxies. It is based on two stellar absorption line indices, the 4000 Angstrom break strength and the Balmer absorption line index Hdelta_A. Together, these indices allow us to constrain the mean stellar ages of galaxies and the fractional stellar mass formed in bursts over the past few Gyr. A comparison with broad band photometry then yields estimates of dust attenuation and of stellar mass. We generate a large library of Monte Carlo realizations of different star formation histories, including starbursts of varying strength and a range of metallicities. We use this library to generate median likelihood estimates of burst mass fractions, dust attenuation strengths, stellar masses and stellar mass-to-light ratios for a sample of 122,208 galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The typical 95% confidence range in our estimated stellar masses is +-40%. We study how the stellar mass-to-light ratios of galaxies vary as a function of absolute magnitude, concentration index and photometric pass-band and how dust attenuation varies as a function of absolute magnitude and 4000 Angstrom break strength. We also calculate how the total stellar mass of the present Universe is distributed over galaxies as a function of their mass, size, concentration, colour, burst mass fraction and surface mass density. We find that most of the stellar mass in the local Universe resides in galaxies that have stellar masses \~5\times 10^10 M_sol, half light radii ~3 kpc, and half- light surface mass densities ~10^9 M_sol/kpc^2. The distribution of D(4000) is strongly bimodal, showing a clear division between galaxies dominated by old stellar populations and galaxies with more recent star formation., accepted by MNRAS, significant changes to methodology from previous version