The SLACS Survey. VIII. The Relation between Environment and Internal Structure of Early-Type Galaxies

Abstract

We study the relation between the internal structure of early-type galaxies and their environment using 70 strong gravitational lenses from the SLACS Survey. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database is used to determine two measures of overdensity of galaxies around each lens—the projected number density of galaxies inside the tenth nearest neighbor (Σ₁₀) and within a cone of radius one h ^-1 Mpc (D ₁). Our main results are as follows. (1) The average overdensity is somewhat larger than unity, consistent with lenses preferring overdense environments as expected for massive early-type galaxies (12/70 lenses are in known groups/clusters). (2) The distribution of overdensities is indistinguishable from that of "twin" nonlens galaxies selected from SDSS to have the same redshift and stellar velocity dispersion σ_*. Thus, within our errors, lens galaxies are an unbiased population, and the SLACS results can be generalized to the overall population of early-type galaxies. (3) Typical contributions from external mass distribution are no more than a few percent in local mass density, reaching 10-20% (~0.05-0.10 external convergence) only in the most extreme overdensities. (4) No significant correlation between overdensity and slope of the mass-density profile of the lens galaxies is found. (5) Satellite galaxies (those with a more luminous companion) have marginally steeper mass-density profiles (as quantified by f _SIE = σ_*/σ_SIE = 1.12 ± 0.05 versus 1.01 ± 0.01) and smaller dynamically normalized mass enclosed within the Einstein radius (Δlog M _Ein/M _dim differs by -0.09 ± 0.03 dex) than central galaxies (those without). This result suggests that tidal stripping may affect the mass structure of early-type galaxies down to kpc scales probed by strong lensing, when they fall into larger structures.

Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with programs 10174, 10587, 10886, 10494, and 10798.