Galaxy Zoo: Multi-Mergers and the Millennium Simulation

Abstract

We present a catalogue of 39 multiple-mergers found using the mergers catalogue of the Galaxy Zoo project for $z<0.1$ and compare them to corresponding semi-analytical galaxies from the Millennium Simulation. We estimate the (volume-limited) multi-merger fraction of the local Universe using our sample and find it to be at least two orders of magnitude less than binary-mergers - in good agreement with the simulations (especially the Munich group). We then investigate the properties of galaxies in binary- and multi-mergers (morphologies, colours, stellar masses and environment) and compare these results with those predicted by the semi-analytical galaxies. We find that multi-mergers favour galaxies with properties typical of elliptical morphologies and that this is in qualitative agreement with the models. Studies of multi-mergers thus provide an independent (and largely corroborating) test of the Millennium semi-analytical models.

12 pages. 7 Figures. 2 Tables. Submitted to MNRAS

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• The frequency of dust lanes in edge-on spiral galaxies identified by Galaxy Zoo in KiDS imaging of GAMA targets
• Living with Neighbors. II. Statistical Analysis of Flybys and Mergers of Dark Matter Halos in Cosmological Simulations
• Characterising the Structure of Halo Merger Trees Using a Single Parameter: The Tree Entropy
• Living with Neighbors. IV. Dissecting the Spin$-$Orbit Alignment of Dark Matter Halos: Interacting Neighbors and the Local Large-scale Structure
• SpArcFiRe: morphological selection effects due to reduced visibility of tightly winding arms in distant spiral galaxies