Environmental Invariance of the Galaxy Size-Mass Relation

Abstract

The galaxy size-luminosity and size-stellar mass relations are important constraints on the galactic baryon cycle of gas accretion, star formation, and feedback. There are conflicting claims in the literature regarding how environment influences size: both direct transformative effects and `assembly bias' may contribute to observed variations with environment. We construct a large homogeneous sample of size measurements to M*~10^7 Msun. Our sample fills a gap in field galaxy size measurements around 10^7-10^8 Msun; the literature at these masses is biased towards satellites of L* galaxies and members of galaxy clusters. We use sizes from the DESI-LS, together with a published catalog that contains stellar masses and cluster positions derived from DESI-LS photometry. Our sample extends to z<0.3 and comprises 540,228 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts and 9,513,732 galaxies with photometric redshifts. We explore the environmental dependence of size for a mass-limited subset of our sample at z<0.05, based on distance to the nearest cluster center. We obtain size-luminosity and size-mass relations in good agreement with previous studies. By separating galaxies according to color and morphology, we show that the environmental variation of the overall size-mass relation on Mpc scales can be understood as the consequence of a changing mixture of subpopulations, rather than direct size transformation. For example, at fixed mass, quiescent (red) late-type galaxies within 2Mpc of a cluster have the same size as quiescent late-type galaxies 30Mpc from the nearest cluster. Our results support individual galaxy assembly histories as the primary determinant of galaxy size. The existence of significantly different, environment-insensitive size mass relations for subpopulations separated by color and Sersic index provides a clear target for calibration of the baryon cycle in cosmological simulations.