Stellar Mass Profiles of Quiescent Galaxies in Different Environments at z ∼ 0

Abstract

We present the stellar mass profiles of 147 isolated quiescent galaxies in very low-density environments (i.e., void regions) in the local universe (0.01 < z < 0.06) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. These galaxies have stellar masses between 9.8 ≲ log( M * / M ⊙ ) ≲ 11.2 and they represent ∼15% of the whole galaxy population in the void regions down to M r  = −19. We do not find any isolated quiescent galaxies with log( M * / M ⊙ ) ≳ 11.2. We compare the stellar mass profiles of these isolated quiescent galaxies with those of the profiles of stellar mass-matched samples of the quiescent galaxies in group and cluster environments. We find that, at a fixed mass, quiescent galaxies in voids have similar central (1 kpc) mass densities (Σ 1 ) and central velocity dispersions ( σ 1 ) compared to their counterparts in groups and clusters. We show that quiescent galaxies in voids have at most 10%–25% smaller half-mass (and half-light) sizes compared to quiescent galaxies in groups and clusters. We conclude that for the intermediate stellar mass range of 10 10 –10 11 M ⊙ in the local universe, environmental mechanisms have no significant additional effect on the mass profiles of the quiescent galaxies.