The environments of luminous infrared galaxies

Abstract

This work studies the relationship between SFR, stellar mass and environment of local IR galaxies, especially LIRGs. It is found that the L IR ∼ 1011L⊙ marks an important luminosity point among IR galaxies - the large scale density of environment around LIRGs correlates strongly with their SFR above this value at a fixed stellar mass. On the other hand there is no clear correlation between stellar mass and density at constant SFR. No matter what the stellar mass is, local LIRGs in similar density environment tend to have the same SFR. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.