We investigated the typical environment and physical properties of "red discs" and "blue bulges", comparing those to the "normal" objects in the blue cloud and red sequence. Our sample is composed of cluster members and field galaxies at z ≤ 0.1, so that we can assess the impact of the local and global environment. We find that disc galaxies display a strong dependence on environment, becoming redder for higher densities. This effect is more pronounced for objects within the virial radius, being also strong related to the stellar mass. We find that local and global environment affect galaxy properties, but the most effective parameter is stellar mass. We find evidence for a scenario where "blue discs" are transformed into "red discs" as they grow in mass and move to the inner parts of clusters. From the metallicity differences of red and blue discs, and the analysis of their star formation histories, we suggest the quenching process is slow. We estimate a quenching time scale of ∼ 2−3 Gyr. We also find from the sSFR−M * plane that "red discs" gradually change as they move into clusters. The "blue bulges" have many similar properties than "blue discs", but some of the former show strong signs of asymmetry. The high asymmetry "blue bulges" display enhanced recent star formation compared to their regular counterparts. That indicates some of these systems may have increased their star formation due to mergers. Nonetheless, there may not be a single evolutionary path for these blue early-type objects.

We investigate segregation phenomena in galaxy groups in the range of 0.2 < z < 1. We study a sample of groups selected from the 4th Data Release of the DEEP2 galaxy redshift survey. We used only groups with at least 8 members within a radius of 4 Mpc. Outliers were removed with the shifting gapper techinque and, then, the virial properties were estimated for each group. The sample was divided into two stacked systems: low(z ≤ 0.6) and high (z > 0.6) redshift groups. Assuming that the color index (U − B) 0 can be used as a proxy for the galaxy type, we found that the fraction of blue (star-forming) objects is higher in the high-z sample, with blue objects being dominant at M B > −19.5 for both samples, and red objects being dominant at M B < −19.5 only for the low-z sample. Also, the radial variation of the red fraction indicates that there are more red objects with R < R 200 in the low-z sample than in the high-z sample. Our analysis indicates statistical evidence of kinematic segregation, at the 99% c.l., for the low-z sample: redder and brighter galaxies present lower velocity dispersions than bluer and fainter ones. We also find a weaker evidence for spatial segregation between red and blue objects, at the 70% c.l. The analysis of the high-z sample reveals a different result: red and blue galaxies have velocity dispersion distributions not statistically distinct, although redder objects are more concentrated than the bluer ones at the 95% c.l. From the comparison of blue/red and bright/faint fractions, and considering the approximate lookback timescale between the two samples (∼3 Gyr), our results are consistent with a scenario where bright red galaxies had time to reach energy equipartition, while faint blue/red galaxies in the outskirts infall to the inner parts of the groups, thus reducing spatial segregation from z ∼ 0.8 to z ∼ 0.4.

While there are many ways to identify substructures in galaxy clusters using different wavelengths, each technique has its own caveat. In this paper, we conduct a detailed substructure search and dynamical state characterisation of Abell 2399, a galaxy cluster in the local Universe (z ∼ 0.0579), by performing a multi-wavelength analysis and testing the results through hydro-dynamical simulations. In particular, we apply a Gaussian Mixture Model to the spectroscopic data from SDSS, WINGS, and Omega WINGS Surveys to identify substructures. We further use public XMM-Newton data to investigate the intracluster medium (ICM) thermal properties, creating temperature, metallicity, entropy, and pressure maps. Finally, we run hydro-dynamical simulations to constrain the merger stage of this system. The ICM is very asymmetrical and has regions of temperature and pressure enhancement that evidence a recent merging process. The optical substructure analysis retrieves the two main X-ray concentrations. The temperature, entropy, and pressure are smaller in the secondary clump than in the main clump. On the other hand, its metallicity is considerably higher. This result can be explained by the scenario found by the hydro-dynamical simulations where the secondary clump passed very near to the centre of the main cluster possibly causing the galaxies of that region to release more metals through the increase of ram-pressure stripping.

In this work we investigate the influence of the dynamic state of galaxy clusters on segregation effects and velocity dispersion profiles (VDPs) for a sample of 111 clusters extracted from SDSS-DR7. We find that 73 clusters have Gaussian (G) velocity distribution and 38 clusters have a complex or non-Gaussian (NG) velocity distribution. We also split the G and NG samples into 'active' and 'passive' galaxies, according to their sSFRs and stellar masses. Our results indicate a strong spatial segregation between active and passive galaxies both in G and NG systems, with passive galaxies being more central. We also found that the passive population in G systems is the only family with lower velocity dispersions for the brightest galaxies (M r −22.75), thus presenting velocity segregation with luminosity. The similarity found between the VDPs of the galaxy populations in NG systems indicate that these sets probably share a similar mix of orbits. We also found a clear evolutionary trend for G systems, with brighter galaxies in richer clusters having flatter VDPs. The scenario emerging from this study suggests a direct relationship between segregation effects, VDPs and the dynamic state of clusters.