Central galaxies in different environments: Do they have similar properties?

Abstract

We perform an exhaustive comparison among central galaxies from SDSS catalogs in different local environments at 0.01<=z<=0.08. The central galaxies are separated into two categories: group centrals (host halos containing satellites) and field centrals (host halos without satellites). From the latter, we select other two subsamples: isolated centrals and bright field centrals, both with the same magnitude limit. The stellar mass (Ms) distributions of the field and group central galaxies are different, which explains why in general the field central galaxies are mainly located in the blue cloud/star forming regions, whereas the group central galaxies are strongly biased to the red sequence/passive regions. The isolated centrals occupy the same regions as the bright field centrals since both populations have similar Ms distributions. At parity of Ms, the color and specific star formation rate (sSFR) distributions of the samples are similar, specially between field and group centrals. Furthermore, we find that the stellar-to-halo mass (Ms-Mh) relation of isolated galaxies does not depend on the color, sSFR and morphological type. For systems without satellites, the Ms-Mh relation steepens at high halo masses compared to group centrals, which is a consequence of assuming a one-to-one relation between group total stellar mass and halo mass. Under the same assumption, the scatter around the Ms-Mh relation of centrals with satellites increases with halo mass. Our results suggest that the mass growth of central galaxies is mostly driven by the halo mass, with environment and mergers playing a secondary role.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures after last Referee's report. Accepted for publication in Ap