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Register a new userDynamical masses and non-homology of massive elliptical galaxies grown by dry mergers
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We study whether dry merger-driven size growth of massive elliptical galaxies depends on their initial structural concentration, and analyse the validity of the homology hypothesis for virial mass determination in massive ellipticals grown by dry mergers. High-resolution simulations of a few realistic merger trees, starting with compact progenitors of different structural concentrations (Sersic indices n), show that galaxy growth has little dependence on the initial Sersic index (larger n leads to slightly larger size growth), and depends more on other particulars of the merger history. We show that the deposition of accreted matter in the outer parts leads to a systematic and predictable breaking of the homology between remnants and progenitors, which we characterize through the evolution, during the course of the merger history, of virial coefficients K = GM/Re sigma^2 associated to the most commonly-used dynamical and stellar mass parameters. The virial coefficient for the luminous mass, K , is about 50 per cent larger at the z = 2 start of the merger evolution than in z = 0 remnants. Ignoring virial evolution leads to biased virial mass estimates. We provide K corresponding to a variety of dynamical and stellar mass parameters, and provide recipes for the dynamical determination of galaxy masses. For massive, non-compact ellipticals, the popular expression M = 5 Re sigma^2 / G underestimates the dynamical mass within the luminous body by factors of up to 4; it instead provides an approximation to the total stellar mass with smaller uncertainty than current stellar population models.
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For many massive compact galaxies, their dynamical masses ($M_mathrm{dyn} propto sigma^2 r_mathrm{e}$) are lower than their stellar masses ($M_star$). We analyse the unphysical mass discrepancy $M_star / M_mathrm{dyn} > 1$ on a stellar-mass-selected sample of early-type galaxies ($M_star gtrsim 10^{11} mathrm{M_odot}$) at redshifts $z sim 0.2$ to $z sim 1.1$. We build stacked spectra for bins of redshift, size and stellar mass, obtain velocity dispersions, and infer dynamical masses using the virial relation $M_mathrm{dyn} equiv K sigma_mathrm{e}^2 r_mathrm{e} / G$ with $K = 5.0$; this assumes homology between our galaxies and nearby massive ellipticals. Our sample is completed using literature data, including individual objects up to $z sim 2.5$ and a large local reference sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find that, at all redshifts, the discrepancy between $M_star$ and $M_mathrm{dyn}$ grows as galaxies depart from the present-day relation between stellar mass and size: the more compact a galaxy, the larger its $M_star / M_mathrm{dyn}$. Current uncertainties in stellar masses cannot account for values of $M_star / M_mathrm{dyn}$ above 1. Our results suggest that the homology hypothesis contained in the $M_mathrm{dyn}$ formula above breaks down for compact galaxies. We provide an approximation to the virial coefficient $K sim 6.0 left[ r_mathrm{e} / (3.185 mathrm{kpc}) right]^{-0.81} left[ M_star / (10^{11} mathrm{M_odot}) right]^{0.45}$, which solves the mass discrepancy problem. A rough approximation to the dynamical mass is given by $M_mathrm{dyn} sim left[ sigma_mathrm{e} / (200 mathrm{km s^{-1}}) right]^{3.6} left[ r_mathrm{e} / (3 mathrm{kpc}) right]^{0.35} 2.1 times 10^{11} mathrm{M_odot}$.
We search for ongoing major dry-mergers in a well selected sample of local Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) from the C4 cluster catalogue. 18 out of 515 early-type BCGs with redshift between 0.03 and 0.12 are found to be in major dry-mergers, which are selected as pairs (or triples) with $r$-band magnitude difference $dm<1.5$ and projected separation $rp<30$ kpc, and showing signatures of interaction in the form of significant asymmetry in residual images. We find that the fraction of BCGs in major dry-mergers increases with the richness of the clusters, consistent with the fact that richer clusters usually have more massive (or luminous) BCGs. We estimate that present-day early-type BCGs may have experienced on average $sim 0.6 (tmerge/0.3Gyr)^{-1}$ major dry-mergers and through this process increases their luminosity (mass) by $15% (tmerge/0.3Gyr)^{-1} (fmass/0.5)$ on average since $z=0.7$, where $tmerge$ is the merging timescale and $fmass$ is the mean mass fraction of companion galaxies added to the central ones. We also find that major dry-mergers do not seem to elevate radio activities in BCGs. Our study shows that major dry-mergers involving BCGs in clusters of galaxies are not rare in the local Universe, and they are an important channel for the formation and evolution of BCGs.
Dissipationless (gas-free or dry) mergers have been suggested to play a major role in the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, particularly in growing their mass and size without altering their stellar populations. We perform a new test of the dry merger hypothesis by comparing N-body simulations of realistic systems to empirical constraints provided by recent studies of lens early-type galaxies. We find that major and minor dry mergers: i) preserve the nearly isothermal structure of early-type galaxies within the observed scatter; ii) do not change more than the observed scatter the ratio between total mass M and virial mass R_e*sigma/2G (where R_e is the half-light radius and sigma the projected velocity dispersion); iii) increase strongly galaxy sizes [as M^(0.85+/-0.17)] and weakly velocity dispersions [as M^(0.06+/-0.08)] with mass, thus moving galaxies away from the local observed M-R_e and M-sigma relations; iv) introduce substantial scatter in the M-R_e and M-sigma relations. Our findings imply that, unless there is a high degree of fine tuning of the mix of progenitors and types of interactions, present-day massive early-type galaxies cannot have assembled more than ~50% of their mass, and increased their size by more than a factor ~1.8, via dry merging.
ABRIDGED: We study the evolution since z~1 of the rest-frame B luminosity function of the early-type galaxies (ETGs) in ~0.7 deg^2 in the COSMOS field. In order to identify ALL progenitors of local ETGs we construct the sample of high-z galaxies using two complementary criteria: (i) A morphological selection based on the Zurich Estimator of Structural Types, and (ii) A photometric selection based on the galaxy properties in the (U-V)-M_V color-magnitude diagram. We furthermore constrain both samples so as to ensure that the selected progenitors of ETGs are compatible with evolving into systems which obey the mu_B-r_{hl} Kormendy relation. Assuming the luminosity evolution derived from studies of the fundamental plane for high-z ETGs, our analysis shows no evidence for a decrease in the number density of the most massive ETGs out to z~ 0.7: Both the morphologically- and the photometrically-selected sub-samples show no evolution in the number density of bright (~L>2.5L*) ETGs. Allowing for different star formation histories, and cosmic variance, we estimate a maximum decrease in the number density of massive galaxies at that redshift of ~30%. We observe, however, in both the photometrical and morphological samples, a deficit of up to ~2-3 of fainter ETGs over the same cosmic period. Our results argue against a significant contribution of recent dissipationless ``dry mergers to the formation of the most massive ETGs. We suggest that the mass growth in low luminosity ETGs can be explained with a conversion from z~0.7 to z=0 of blue, irregular and disk galaxies into low- and intermediate-mass ``red ETGs, possibly also through gas rich mergers.
We present a grid-based non-parametric approach to obtain a triaxial three-dimensional luminosity density from its surface brightness distribution. Triaxial deprojection is highly degenerate and our approach illustrates the resulting difficulties. Fortunately, for massive elliptical galaxies, many deprojections for a particular line of sight can be discarded, because their projection along other lines of sight does not resemble elliptical galaxies. The near-elliptical isophotes of these objects imply near ellipsoidal intrinsic shapes. In fact, deprojection is unique for densities distributed on ellipsoidal shells. The constrained non-parametric deprojection method we present here relaxes this constraint and assumes that the contours of the luminosity density are boxy/discy ellipsoids with radially varying axis ratios. With this approach we are able to reconstruct the intrinsic triaxial densities of our test models, including one drawn from an $N$-body simulation. The method also allows to compare the relative likelihood of deprojections at different viewing angles. We show that the viewing orientations of individual galaxies with nearly ellipsoidal isophotal shapes can be constrained from photometric data alone.
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