The Evolution of Early‐Type Galaxies in Distant Clusters

Abstract

We present results from an optical-infrared photometric study of early-type (E+S0) galaxies in 19 galaxy clusters out to z = 0.9. The galaxy sample is selected on the basis of morphologies determined from Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ) WFPC2 images and is photometrically defined in the K band in order to minimize redshift-dependent selection biases. Using new ground-based photometry in five optical and infrared bands for each cluster, we examine the evolution of the color-magnitude relation for early-type cluster galaxies, considering its slope, intercept, and color scatter around the mean relation. New multiwavelength photometry of galaxies in the Coma Cluster is used to provide a baseline sample at z ≈ 0 with which to compare the distant clusters. The optical-IR colors of the early-type cluster galaxies become bluer with increasing redshift in a manner consistent with the passive evolution of an old stellar population formed at an early cosmic epoch. The degree of color evolution is similar for clusters at similar redshift and does not depend strongly on the optical richness or X-ray luminosity of the cluster, which suggests that the history of early-type galaxies is relatively insensitive to environment, at least above a certain density threshold. The slope of the color-magnitude relationship shows no significant change out to z = 0.9, which provides evidence that it arises from a correlation between galaxy mass and metallicity, not age. Finally, the intrinsic scatter in the optical-IR colors of the galaxies is small and nearly constant with redshift, which indicates that the majority of giant, early-type galaxies in clusters share a common star formation history, with little perturbation due to uncorrelated episodes of later star formation. Taken together, our results are consistent with models in which most early-type galaxies in rich clusters are old, formed the majority of their stars at high redshift in a well-synchronized fashion, and evolved quiescently thereafter. We consider several possible effects that may be introduced by the choice of morphologically recognizable elliptical and S0 galaxies in dense environments as a subject for study. In particular, the inclusion of S0 galaxies, which might be undergoing morphological transformation in clusters as part of the Butcher-Oemler effect, may influence the results of our investigation.