Evolution of the Fundamental Plane of 0.2<z<1.2 Early-type galaxies in the EGS

Abstract

The Fundamental Plane relates the structural properties of early-type galaxies such as its surface brightness and effective radius with its dynamics. The study of its evolution has therefore important implications for models of galaxy formation and evolution. This work aims to identify signs of evolution of early-type galaxies through the study of parameter correlations using a sample of 135 field galaxies extracted from the Extended Groth Strip in the redshift range 0.2<z<1.2. Using DEEP2 data, we calculate the internal velocity dispersions by extracting the stellar kinematics from absorption line spectra, using a maximum penalized likelihood approach. Morphology was determined through visual classification using the V+I images of ACS. The structural parameters of these galaxies were obtained by fitting de Vaucouleurs stellar profiles to the ACS I-band images, using the GALFIT code. Sérsic and bulge-to-disc decomposition models were also fitted to our sample of galaxies, and we found a good agreement in the Fundamental Plane derived from the three models. Assuming that effective radii and velocity dispersions do not evolve with redshift, we have found a brightening of 0.68 mag in the B-band and 0.52 mag in the g-band at <z>=0.7. However, the scatter in the FP is reduced by half when we allow the FP slope to evolve, suggesting a different evolution of early-type galaxies according to their intrinsic properties. The study of the Kormendy relation shows the existence of a population of very compact (Re<2 Kpc) and bright galaxies (-21.5>Mg>-22.5), of which there are only a small fraction (0.4%) at z=0. The evolution of these compact objects is mainly caused by an increase in size that could be explained by the action of dry minor mergers, and this population is responsible for the evolution detected in the Fundamental Plane.

Accepted for publication in A&A. 12 pages, 10 Figures, and 1 online table

References in corpus (6)

• K-corrections and filter transformations in the ultraviolet, optical, and near infrared
• The All-wavelength Extended Groth Strip International Survey (AEGIS) Data Sets
• Size evolution of the most massive galaxies at 1.7<z<3 from GOODS NICMOS survey imaging
• The Evolution of Field Early-Type Galaxies in the FDF and WHDF
• Evolution of the optical Tully-Fisher relation up to z=1.3
• The Evolution of Cluster Early-Type Galaxies over the Past 8 Gyr

Cited by in corpus (14)

• The stellar mass-size relation for the most isolated galaxies in the local Universe
• The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Fundamental Plane Data
• Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. V. The Relation Between Black Hole Mass and Host Galaxy Luminosity for a Sample of 79 Active Galaxies
• The L-sigma Relation of Local HII Galaxies
• Observed trend in the star formation history and the dark matter fraction of galaxies at redshift $z\approx 0.8$
• Salpeter normalization of the Stellar Initial Mass Function for massive galaxies at z~1
• The Spectroscopy and H-band Imaging of Virgo cluster galaxies (SHIVir) Survey: Scaling Relations and the Stellar-to-Total Mass Relation
• Observations contradict galaxy size and surface brightness predictions that are based on the expanding universe hypothesis
• Detection of spatial correlations of fundamental plane residuals, and cosmological implications
• A photometric analysis of Abell 1689: two-dimensional multi-structure decomposition, morphological classification, and the Fundamental Plane
• Constraints on the evolutionary mechanisms of massive galaxies since $z\sim 1$ from their velocity dispersions
• Dry Merger Rate and Post-merger Fraction in the Coma Cluster Core
• Is there a tilt in the fundamental (hyper)plane?
• Velocity Dispersions and Stellar Populations of the Most Compact and Massive Early-Type Galaxies at Redshift ~1