Use of spatial cross correlation function to study formation mechanism of massive elliptical galaxies

Abstract

Spatial clustering nature of galaxies have been studied previously through auto correlation function. The same type of cross correlation function has been used to investigate parametric clustering nature of galaxies e.g. with respect to masses and sizes of galaxies. Here formation and evolution of several components of nearby massive early type galaxies have been envisaged through cross correlations, in the mass-size parametric plane, with high redshift early type galaxies (hereafter ETG).It is found that the inner most components of nearby ETGs have significant correlation with ETGs in the highest redshift range called red nuggets whereas intermediate components are highly correlated with ETGs in the redshift range with z value greater than 0.5 and less than 0.75. The outer most part has no correlation in any range, suggesting a scenario through in situ accretion. The above formation scenario is consistent with the previous results obtained for NGC5128 (Chattopadhyay et al. (2009), Chattopadhyay et al. (2013)) and to some extent for nearby elliptical galaxies (Huang et al. (2013)) after considering a sample of ETGs at high redshift with stellar masses greater than or equal to 108.73 M-Sun. So the present work indicates a three phase formation of massive nearby elliptical galaxies instead of two as discussed in previous works.

arXiv comment16 pages 4 figures

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• Evaluation of the number of clusters in a data set using $p$-values from Multiple Tests of Hypotheses