Cluster and field elliptical galaxies at z~1.3. The marginal role of the environment and the relevance of the galaxy central regions

Abstract

We compared the properties of 56 elliptical galaxies selected from three clusters at $1.2<z<1.4$ with those of field galaxies in the GOODS-S (~30), COSMOS (~180) and CANDELS (~220) fields. We studied the relationships among effective radius, surface brightness, stellar mass, stellar mass density ${\Sigma }_{Re}$ and central mass density ${\Sigma }_{1kpc}$ within 1 kpc radius. We find that cluster ellipticals do not differ from field ellipticals: they share the same structural parameters at fixed mass and the same scaling relations. On the other hand, the population of field ellipticals at $z\sim 1.3$ shows a significant lack of massive ($M_{\ast }>2\times 10^{11}$ M${}_{\odot }$) and large (R${}_e>4-5$ kpc) ellipticals with respect to the cluster. Nonetheless, at $M\ast <2\times 10^{11}$ M${}_{\odot }$, the two populations are similar. The size-mass relation of ellipticals at z~1.3 defines two different regimes, above and below a transition mass $m_t\sim 2-3\times 10^{10}$ M${}_{\odot }$: at lower masses the relation is nearly flat (R${}_e\propto M_{\ast }^{-0.1\pm 0.2}$), the mean radius is constant at ~1 kpc and ${\Sigma }_{Re}\sim {\Sigma }_{1kpc}$ while, at larger masses, the relation is R${}_e\propto M{\ast }^{0.64\pm 0.09}$. The transition mass marks the mass at which galaxies reach the maximum ${\Sigma }_{Re}$. Also the ${\Sigma }_{1kpc}$-mass relation follows two different regimes, ${\Sigma }_{1kpc}\propto M{\ast }_{1.07<m_t}^{0.64>m_t}$, defining a transition mass density ${\Sigma }_{1kpc}\sim 2-3\times 10^3$ M${}_{\odot }$ pc${}^{-2}$. The mass density ${\Sigma }_{Re}$ does not correlate with mass, dense/compact galaxies can be assembled over a wide mass regime, independently of the environment. The central mass density, ${\Sigma }_{1kpc}$, besides to be correlated with the mass, is correlated to the age of the stellar population: the higher the central stellar mass density, the higher the mass, the older the age of the stellar population. [Abridged]

Accepted for publication in A&A; 20 pages, 13 figures (replaced to match the A&A version)

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