期刊
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
卷 465, 期 3, 页码 2895-2900出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw2895
关键词
galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, CD; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; galaxies: high-redshift; galaxies: interactions
资金
- STFC [ST/M001008/1]
- Worcester College Oxford
- UKs Science and Technology Facilities Council [St/K502029/1]
- STFC
- European Research Council Consolidator Grant
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [1368091, ST/K502029/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/L000695/1, ST/K502029/1] Funding Source: UKRI
We investigate the contribution of major mergers (mass ratios > 1: 5) to stellar mass growth and morphological transformations around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation (z similar to 2). We visually classify a complete sample of massive (M > 10(10)M(circle dot)) galaxies at this epoch, drawn from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey, into late-type galaxies, major mergers, spheroids and disturbed spheroids which show morphological disturbances. Given recent simulation work, which indicates that recent (< 0.3-0.4 Gyr) major-merger remnants exhibit clear tidal features in such images, we use the fraction of disturbed spheroids to probe the role of major mergers in driving morphological transformations. The percentage of blue spheroids (i.e. with ongoing star formation) that show morphological disturbances is only 21 +/- 4 per cent, indicating that major mergers are not the dominant mechanism for spheroid creation at z similar to 2 - other processes, such as minor mergers or cold accretion are likely to be the main drivers of this process. We also use the rest-frame U-band luminosity as a proxy for star formation to show that only a small fraction of the star formation budget (similar to 3 per cent) is triggered by major mergers. Taken together, our results show that major mergers are not significant drivers of galaxy evolution at z similar to 2.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据