Virgo Filaments

III. The gas content of galaxies in filaments as predicted by the GAEA semi-analytic model

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia Galileo Galilei, Università degli studi di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio, 3, I-35122 Padova, Italy
² INAF – Osservatorio astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio, 5, I-35122 Padova, Italy
³ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11, I-34131 Trieste, Italy
⁴ IFPU - Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, via Beirut 2, 34151 Trieste, Italy
⁵ Siena College, 515 Loudon Rd., Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
⁶ The University of Kansas, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Malott Room 1082, 1251 Wescoe Hall Drive, Lawrence KS 66045, USA,
⁷ Observatoire de Paris, LERMA, Collège de France, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne University, 75014 Paris, France
⁸ INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, via Gobetti 93/3, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
⁹ Laboratoire d’astrophysique, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Observatoire, CH-1290 Versoix, Switzerland
¹⁰ Tianjin Normal University, Binshuixidao 393, 300387 Tianjin, China
¹¹ Institute for Physics, Laboratory for Galaxy Evolution and Spectral modelling, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Observatoire de Sauverny, Chemin Pegasi 51, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland

Received: 22 May 2024
Accepted: 6 August 2024

Abstract

Galaxy evolution depends on the environment in which galaxies are located. The various physical processes (ram-pressure stripping, tidal interactions, etc.) that are able to affect the gas content in galaxies have different efficiencies in different environments. In this work, we examine the gas (atomic HI and molecular H₂) content of local galaxies inside and outside clusters, groups, and filaments as well as in isolation using a combination of observational and simulated data. We exploited a catalogue of galaxies in the Virgo cluster (including the surrounding filaments and groups) and compared the data against the predictions of the Galaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) semi-analytic model, which has explicit prescriptions for partitioning the cold gas content in its atomic and molecular phases. We extracted from the model both a mock catalogue that mimics the observational biases and one not tailored to observations in order to study the impact of observational limits on the results and predict trends in regimes not covered by the current observations. The observations and simulated data show that galaxies within filaments exhibit intermediate cold gas content between galaxies in clusters and in isolation. The amount of HI is typically more sensitive to the environment than H₂ and low-mass galaxies (log₁₀[M_⋆/M_⊙]< 10) are typically more affected than their massive (log₁₀[M_⋆/M_⊙]> 10) counterparts. Considering only model data, we identified two distinct populations among filament galaxies present in similar proportions: those simultaneously lying in groups and isolated galaxies. The former has properties more similar to cluster and group galaxies, and the latter is more similar to those of field galaxies. We therefore did not detect the strong effects of filaments themselves on the gas content of galaxies, and we ascribe the results to the presence of groups in filaments.