Setting firmer constraints on the evolution of the most massive, central galaxies from their local abundances and ages

Abstract

There is still much debate surrounding how the most massive, central galaxies in the local universe have assembled their stellar mass, especially the relative roles of in-situ growth versus later accretion via mergers. In this paper, we set firmer constraints on the evolutionary pathways of the most massive central galaxies by making use of empirical estimates on their abundances and stellar ages. The most recent abundance matching and direct measurements strongly favour that a substantial fraction of massive galaxies with Mstar>3x10^11 Msun reside at the centre of clusters with mass Mhalo>3x10^13 Msun. Spectral analysis supports ages >10 Gyrs, corresponding to a formation redshift z_form >2. We combine these two pieces of observationally-based evidence with the mass accretion history of their host dark matter haloes. We find that in these massive haloes, the stellar mass locked up in the central galaxy is comparable to, if not greater than, the total baryonic mass at z_form. These findings indicate that either only a relatively minor fraction of their present-day stellar mass was formed in-situ at z_form, or that these massive, central galaxies form in the extreme scenario where almost all of the baryons in the progenitor halo are converted into stars. Interestingly, the latter scenario would not allow for any substantial size growth since the galaxy's formation epoch either via mergers or expansion. We show our results hold irrespective of systematic uncertainties in stellar mass, abundances, galaxy merger rates, stellar initial mass function, star formation rate and dark matter accretion histories.

11 pages, 8 figures, MNRAS, accepted

References in corpus (19)

• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) -- Overview
• Cold streams in early massive hot haloes as the main mode of galaxy formation
• 3D-HST+CANDELS: The Evolution of the Galaxy Size-Mass Distribution since $z=3$
• Compaction and Quenching of High-z Galaxies in Cosmological Simulations: Blue and Red Nuggets
• A primer on hierarchical galaxy formation: the semi-analytical approach
• The Evolution of Galaxy Structure over Cosmic Time
• The Atlas3D Project - XXX. Star formation histories and stellar population scaling relations of early-type galaxies
• The Atlas3D project -- XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
• The dramatic size evolution of elliptical galaxies and the quasar feedback
• The baryon fraction of LambdaCDM haloes
• Two Conditions for Galaxy Quenching: Compact Centres and Massive Haloes
• GMASS Ultradeep Spectroscopy of Galaxies at z~2. III: The emergence of the color bimodality at z~2
• The growth of the nuclear black holes in submillimeter galaxies
• First results from the VIRIAL survey: the stellar content of $UVJ$-selected quiescent galaxies at $1.5<z<2$ from KMOS
• The accretion histories of brightest cluster galaxies from their stellar population gradients
• A cosmological context for compact massive galaxies
• An empirical prediction for stellar metallicity distributions in nearby galaxies
• The Origin of the Mass-Radius Relation of Early-Type Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Predicting fully self-consistent satellite richness, galaxy growth and starformation rates from the STastical sEmi-Empirical modeL STEEL
• The special growth history of central galaxies in groups and clusters
• The weak dependence of velocity dispersion on disk fractions, mass-to-light ratio and redshift: Implications for galaxy and black hole evolution