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Register a new userThe Redshift Evolution of Wet, Dry, and Mixed Galaxy Mergers from Close Galaxy Pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey
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Lihwai Lin
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We study the redshift evolution of galaxy pair fractions and merger rates for different types of galaxies using kinematic pairs selected from the DEEP2 Redshift Survey. By parameterizing the evolution of the pair fraction as (1+z)^{m}, we find that the companion rate increases mildly with redshift with m = 0.41+-0.20 for all galaxies with -21 < M_B^{e} < -19. Blue galaxies show slightly faster evolution in the blue companion rate with m = 1.27+-0.35 while red galaxies have had fewer red companions in the past as evidenced by the negative slope m = -0.92+-0.59. We find that at low redshift the pair fraction within the red sequence exceeds that of the blue cloud, indicating a higher merger probability among red galaxies compared to that among the blue galaxies. With further assumptions on the merger timescale and the fraction of pairs that will merge, the galaxy major merger rates for 0.1 < z <1.2 are estimated to be ~10^{-3}h^{3}Mpc^{-3}Gyr^{-1} with a factor of 2 uncertainty. At z ~ 1.1, 68% of mergers are wet, 8% of mergers are dry, and 24% of mergers are mixed, compared to 31% wet mergers, 25% dry mergers, and 44% mixed mergers at z ~ 0.1. The growth of dry merger rates with decreasing redshift is mainly due to the increase in the co-moving number density of red galaxies over time. About 22% to 54% of present-day L^{*} galaxies have experienced major mergers since z ~ 1.2, depending on the definition of major mergers. Moreover, 24% of the red galaxies at the present epoch have had dry mergers with luminosity ratios between 1:4 and 4:1 since z ~ 1. Our results also suggest that the wet mergers and/or mixed mergers may be partially responsible for producing red galaxies with intermediate masses while a significant portion of massive red galaxies is assembled through dry mergers at later times.
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We study the environment of wet, dry, and mixed galaxy mergers at 0.75 < z < 1.2 using close pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey. We find that the typical environment of mixed and dry merger candidates is denser than that of wet mergers, mostly due to the color-density relation. While the galaxy companion rate (Nc) is observed to increase with overdensity, using N-body simulations we find that the fraction of pairs that will eventually merge decreases with the local density, predominantly because interlopers are more common in dense environments. After taking into account the merger probability of pairs as a function of local density, we find only marginal environment dependence of the fractional merger rate for wet mergers over the redshift range we have probed. On the other hand, the fractional dry merger rate increases rapidly with local density due to the increased population of red galaxies in dense environments. We also find that the environment distribution of K+A galaxies is similar to that of wet mergers alone and of wet+mixed mergers, suggesting a possible connection between K+A galaxies and wet and/or wet+mixed mergers. We conclude that, as early as z ~ 1, high-density regions are the preferred environment in which dry mergers occur, and that present-day red-sequence galaxies in overdense environments have, on average, undergone 1.2+-0.3 dry mergers since this time, accounting for (38+-10)% of their mass accretion in the last 8 billion years. Our findings suggest that dry mergers are crucial in the mass-assembly of massive red galaxies in dense environments, such as Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) in galaxy groups and clusters.
We derive the close, kinematic pair fraction and merger rate up to z ~ 1.2 from the initial data of the DEEP2 Redshift Survey. Assuming a mild luminosity evolution, the number of companions per luminous galaxy is found to evolve as (1+z)^{m}, with m = 0.51+-0.28; assuming no evolution, m = 1.60+-0.29. Our results imply that only 9% of present-day $L^{*}$ galaxies have undergone major mergers since z ~ 1.2 and that the average major merger rate is about 4* 10^{-4} h^{3} Mpc^{-3} Gyr^{-1} for z ~ 0.5 - 1.2. Most previous studies have yielded higher values.
The evolution of the B-band galaxy luminosity function is measured using a sample of more than 11,000 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts from the DEEP2 Redshift Survey. The rest-frame M_B versus U-B color-magnitude diagram of DEEP2 galaxies shows that the color-magnitude bi-modality seen in galaxies locally is still present at redshifts z > 1. Dividing the sample at the trough of this color bimodality into predominantly red and blue galaxies, we find that the luminosity function of each galaxy color type evolves differently. Blue counts tend to shift to brighter magnitudes at constant number density, while the red counts remain largely constant at a fixed absolute magnitude. Using Schechter functions with fixed faint-end slopes we find that M*_B for blue galaxies brightens by ~ 1.3 magnitudes per unit redshift, with no significant evolution in number density. For red galaxies M*_B brightens somewhat less with redshift, while the formal value of phi* declines. When the population of blue galaxies is subdivided into two halves using the rest-frame color as the criterion, the measured evolution of both blue subpopulations is very similar.
We develop empirical methods for modeling the galaxy population and populating cosmological N-body simulations with mock galaxies according to the observed properties of galaxies in survey data. We use these techniques to produce a new set of mock catalogs for the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey based on the output of the high-resolution Bolshoi simulation, as well as two other simulations with different cosmological parameters, all of which we release for public use. The mock-catalog creation technique uses subhalo abundance matching to assign galaxy luminosities to simulated dark-matter halos. It then adds color information to the resulting mock galaxies in a manner that depends on the local galaxy density, in order to reproduce the measured color-environment relation in the data. In the course of constructing the catalogs, we test various models for including scatter in the relation between halo mass and galaxy luminosity, within the abundance-matching framework. We find that there is no constant-scatter model that can simultaneously reproduce both the luminosity function and the autocorrelation function of DEEP2. This result has implications for galaxy-formation theory, and it restricts the range of contexts in which the mocks can be usefully applied. Nevertheless, careful comparisons show that our new mocks accurately reproduce a wide range of the other properties of the DEEP2 catalog, suggesting that they can be used to gain a detailed understanding of various selection effects in DEEP2.
We describe the design and data sample from the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey, the densest and largest precision-redshift survey of galaxies at z ~ 1 completed to date. The survey has conducted a comprehensive census of massive galaxies, their properties, environments, and large-scale structure down to absolute magnitude M_B = -20 at z ~ 1 via ~90 nights of observation on the DEIMOS spectrograph at Keck Observatory. DEEP2 covers an area of 2.8 deg^2 divided into four separate fields, observed to a limiting apparent magnitude of R_AB=24.1. Objects with z < 0.7 are rejected based on BRI photometry in three of the four DEEP2 fields, allowing galaxies with z > 0.7 to be targeted ~2.5 times more efficiently than in a purely magnitude-limited sample. Approximately sixty percent of eligible targets are chosen for spectroscopy, yielding nearly 53,000 spectra and more than 38,000 reliable redshift measurements. Most of the targets which fail to yield secure redshifts are blue objects that lie beyond z ~ 1.45. The DEIMOS 1200-line/mm grating used for the survey delivers high spectral resolution (R~6000), accurate and secure redshifts, and unique internal kinematic information. Extensive ancillary data are available in the DEEP2 fields, particularly in the Extended Groth Strip, which has evolved into one of the richest multiwavelength regions on the sky. DEEP2 surpasses other deep precision-redshift surveys at z ~ 1 in terms of galaxy numbers, redshift accuracy, sample number density, and amount of spectral information. We also provide an overview of the scientific highlights of the DEEP2 survey thus far. This paper is intended as a handbook for users of the DEEP2 Data Release 4, which includes all DEEP2 spectra and redshifts, as well as for the publicly-available DEEP2 DEIMOS data reduction pipelines. [Abridged]
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