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Register a new userThe Active Assembly of the Virgo Cluster: Indications for Recent Group Infall From Early-Type Dwarf Galaxies
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Virgo is a dynamically young galaxy cluster with substructure in its spatial and kinematic distribution. Here, we simultaneously study the phase-space distribution and the main characteristics of Virgos galaxies, particularly its most abundant galaxy population - the early-type dwarfs - to understand their environmental transformation histories. Aside from known correlations with morphological types - like the larger average clustercentric distance of late-type galaxies - we find an intriguing behavior of early types with magnitudes -17 >= M_r >= -18. They show a large velocity spread and an asymmetric phase-space distribution, similar to the late-type galaxies and different from the early types just one magnitude brighter/fainter. Furthermore, we find a close phase-space aggregation of early-type dwarfs at large clustercentric distance and high relative velocity. Nearly all of them show signatures of disk components and their colors imply stellar ages that are younger than the population average. They are not located closely together but spread azimuthally around the cluster center. We show that this is expected from simulations of an infalling galaxy group that slowly gets dispersed after its first pericentric passage. We thus conclude that these galaxies are recent arrivals, and that the peculiar phase-space distribution of early-type dwarfs is evidence for the ongoing growth of this galaxy population. Studying galaxies based on their phase space correlations is a unique way to compare the properties of recent and older cluster members, and to understand which environment most influenced their present-day characteristics.
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We analyze the kinematics of six Virgo cluster dwarf early-type galaxies (dEs) from their globular cluster (GC) systems. We present new Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopy for three of them and reanalyze the data found in the literature for the remaining three. We use two independent methods to estimate the rotation amplitude (Vmax) and velocity dispersion (sigma_GC) of the GC systems and evaluate their statistical significance by simulating non-rotating GC systems with the same number of GC satellites and velocity uncertainties. Our measured kinematics agree with the published values for the three galaxies from the literature and, in all cases, some rotation is measured. However, our simulations show that the null hypothesis of being non-rotating GC systems cannot be ruled out. In the case of VCC1861, the measured Vmax and the simulations indicate that it is not rotating. In the case of VCC1528, the null hypothesis can be marginally ruled out, thus, it might be rotating although further confirmation is needed. In our analysis, we find that, in general, the measured Vmax tends to be overestimated and the measured sigma_GC tends to be underestimated by amounts that depend on the intrinsic Vmax/sigma_GC, the number of observed GCs (N_GC), and the velocity uncertainties. The bias is negligible when N_GC>~20. In those cases where a large N_GC is not available, it is imperative to obtain data with small velocity uncertainties. For instance, errors of <2km/s lead to Vmax<10km/s for a system that is intrinsically not rotating.
We use dust scaling relations to investigate the hypothesis that Virgo cluster transition-type dwarfs are infalling star-forming field galaxies, which is argued based on their optical features (e.g. disks, spiral arms, bars) and kinematic properties similar to late-type galaxies. After their infall, environmental effects gradually transform them into early-type galaxies through the removal of their interstellar medium and quenching of all star formation activity. In this paper, we aim to verify whether this hypothesis holds using far-infrared diagnostics based on Herschel observations of the Virgo cluster taken as part of the Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey (HeViCS). We select transition-type objects in the nearest cluster, Virgo, based on spectral diagnostics indicative for their residual or ongoing star formation. We detect dust Md ~ 10^{5-6} Msun in 36% of the transition-type dwarfs located on the high end of the stellar mass distribution. This suggests that the dust reservoirs present in non-detections fall just below the Herschel detection limit (< 1.1x10^5 Msun). Dust scaling relations support the hypothesis of a transformation between infalling late-type galaxies to quiescent low-mass spheroids governed by environmental effects, with dust-to-stellar mass fractions for transition-type dwarfs in between values characteristic for late-type objects and the lower dust fractions observed in early-type galaxies. Several transition-type dwarfs demonstrate blue central cores, hinting at the radially outside-in removal of gas and quenching of star formation activity. The fact that dust is also confined to the inner regions suggests that metals are stripped in the outer regions along with the gas. In the scenario of most dust being stripped from the galaxy along with the gas, we argue that... (abridged)
We analyze the stellar kinematics of 39 dwarf early-type galaxies (dEs) in the Virgo cluster. Based on the specific stellar angular momentum lambda_e and the ellipticity, we find 11 slow rotators and 28 fast rotators. The fast rotators in the outer parts of the Virgo cluster rotate significantly faster than fast rotators in the inner parts of the cluster. Moreover, 10 out of the 11 slow rotators are located in the inner 3 degrees (D < 1 Mpc) of the cluster. The fast rotators contain subtle disky structures that are visible in high-pass filtered optical images, while the slow rotators do not exhibit these structures. In addition, two of the dEs have kinematically decoupled cores and four more have emission partially filling in the Balmer absorption lines. These properties suggest that Virgo cluster dEs may have originated from late-type star-forming galaxies that were transformed by the environment after their infall into the cluster. The correlation between lambda_e and the clustercentric distance can be explained by a scenario where low luminosity star-forming galaxies fall into the cluster, their gas is rapidly removed by ram pressure stripping, although some of it can be retained in their core, their star-formation is quenched but their stellar kinematics are preserved. After a long time in the cluster and several passes through its center, the galaxies are heated up and transformed into slow rotating dEs.
We present new medium resolution kinematic data for a sample of 21 dwarf early-type galaxies (dEs) mainly in the Virgo cluster, obtained with the WHT and INT telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Spain). These data are used to study the origin of the dwarf elliptical galaxy population inhabiting clusters. We confirm that dEs are not dark matter dominated galaxies, at least up to the half-light radius. We also find that the observed galaxies in the outer parts of the cluster are mostly rotationally supported systems with disky morphological shapes. Rotationally supported dEs have rotation curves similar to those of star forming galaxies of similar luminosity and follow the Tully-Fisher relation. This is expected if dE galaxies are the descendant of low luminosity star forming systems which recently entered the cluster environment and lost their gas due to a ram pressure stripping event, quenching their star formation activity and transforming into quiescent systems, but conserving their angular momentum.
We place our sample of 18 Virgo dwarf early-type galaxies (dEs) on the V-K - velocity dispersion, Faber-Jackson, and Fundamental Plane (FP) scaling relations for massive early-type galaxies (Es). We use a generalized velocity dispersion, which includes rotation, to be able to compare the location of both rotationally and pressure supported dEs with those of early and late-type galaxies. We find that dEs seem to bend the Faber-Jackson relation of Es to lower velocity dispersions, being the link between Es and dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). Regarding the FP relation, we find that dEs are significantly offset with respect to massive hot stellar systems, and re-casting the FP into the so-called kappa-space suggests that this offset is related to dEs having a total mass-to-light ratio higher than Es but still significantly lower than dSph galaxies. Given a stellar mass-to-light ratio based on the measured line indices of dEs, the FP offset allows us to infer that the dark matter fraction within the half light radii of dEs is on average >~ 42% (uncertainties of 17% in the K band and 20% in the V band), fully consistent with an independent estimate in an earlier paper in this series. We also find that dEs in the size-luminosity relation in the near-infrared, like in the optical, are offset from early-type galaxies, but seem to be consistent with late-type galaxies. We thus conclude that the scaling relations show that dEs are different from Es, and that they further strengthen our previous findings that dEs are closer to and likely formed from late-type galaxies.
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