Evolution of Star Formation and H I Gas Content in Galaxy Groups

We present an analysis of the neutral hydrogen gas (H I) content, star formation histories, and distribution of galaxies in groups as a function of their parent halo mass. The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey α.40 data release allows us to study the H I properties of 742 galaxy groups in the volume of sky common to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and ALFALFA surveys. The ALFALFA galaxies have been identified with SDSS optical counterparts and we assigned H I detected objects that fall below the limiting optical magnitude-thereby not contributing substantially to the estimate of the group stellar mass, but significantly to the total group H I mass. We found the gas fraction and the star formation histories as a function of group halo mass to reveal strong evidence for evolution in the gas content and spatial distribution of the high gas fraction members. It is evident that the infall of gas rich objects is important to the continuing growth of large scale structure at the present epoch