Frequency of Tidal Features Correlates with Age and Internal Structure of Early-type Galaxies

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that compact young early-type galaxies (ETGs) were formed by recent mergers. However, it has not yet been revealed whether tidal features that are direct evidence of recent mergers are detected frequently around compact young ETGs. Here, we investigate how the fraction of ETGs having tidal features ($f_T$) depends on age and internal structure (compactness, color gradient, and dust lanes) of ETGs, using 650 ETGs with $M_r\le -19.5$ in $0.015\le z\le 0.055$ that are in deep coadded images of the Stripe 82 region of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that tidal features are more frequent in younger ETGs and more compact ETGs, so that compact young ETGs with ages $\lesssim 6$ Gyr have high $f_T$ of $\sim 0.7$ compared to their less compact or old counterparts with ages $\gtrsim 9$ Gyr that have $f_T\lesssim 0.1$. Among compact young ETGs, those with blue cores have $\sim 3$ times higher $f_T$ than those with red cores. In addition, ETGs with dust lanes have $\sim 4$ times higher $f_T$ than those without dust lanes. Our results provide direct evidence that compact young ETGs especially with blue cores and ETGs with dust lanes are involved in recent mergers. Based on our results and several additional assumptions, we roughly estimate the typical visible time of tidal features after a merger, which is $\sim 3$ Gyr in the depth of the Stripe 82 coadded images.

14 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in the ApJ

References in corpus (23)

• K-corrections and filter transformations in the ultraviolet, optical, and near infrared
• The hierarchical formation of the brightest cluster galaxies
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• Ages and metallicities of early-type galaxies in the SDSS: new insight into the physical origin of the colour-magnitude and the Mg2-sigmaV relations
• Dissipation and Extra Light in Galactic Nuclei: II. 'Cusp' Ellipticals
• The Structures of Distant Galaxies I: Galaxy Structures and the Merger Rate to z~3 in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
• The Structures of Distant Galaxies - III: The Merger History of over 20,000 Massive Galaxies at z < 1.2
• Dissipation and Extra Light in Galactic Nuclei: I. Gas-Rich Merger Remnants
• Dissecting the Red Sequence--I. Star Formation Histories of Quiescent Galaxies: The Color-Magnitude vs. the Color-Sigma Relation
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 Imaging Data: Depth-Optimized Co-adds Over 300 Deg^2 in Five Filters
• Dissipation and the Fundamental Plane: Observational Tests
• Probing the merger history of red early-type galaxies with their faint stellar substructures
• On the lifetime of merger features of equal-mass disk mergers
• Correlation between Galaxy Mergers and Luminous AGN
• Major mergers are not significant drivers of star formation or morphological transformation around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation
• Tidal debris in elliptical galaxies as tracers of mergers with disks
• Massive Galaxies are Larger in Dense Environments: Environmental Dependence of Mass-Size Relation of Early-Type Galaxies
• Observational evidence for bar formation in disk galaxies via cluster-cluster interaction
• Dependence of the Fundamental Plane of Early-type Galaxies on Age and Internal Structure
• Star Formation Enhancement in Barred Disk Galaxies in Interacting Galaxy Clusters
• Extremely Massive Quasars are not Good Proxies for Dense Environments Compared to Massive Galaxies: Environments of Extremely Massive Quasars and Galaxies
• Galaxy Concentrations are Trimodal
• On the Origin of the Scatter in the Red Sequence: An Analysis of Four CLASH Clusters

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Preparing for low surface brightness science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: characterisation of tidal features from mock images
• Evidence for Impact of Galaxy Mergers on Stellar Kinematics of Early-type Galaxies
• Characterising Tidal Features Around Galaxies in Cosmological Simulations
• Massive Early-Type Galaxies in the HSC-SSP: Flux Fraction of Tidal Features and Merger Rates
• Panchromatic Photometry of Low-redshift, Massive Galaxies Selected from SDSS Stripe 82
• Impact of Galaxy Mergers on Stellar Population Profiles of Early-type Galaxies
• Tidal features and disc thicknesses of edge-on galaxies in the SDSS Stripe 82
• Uncovering Tidal Treasures: Automated Classification of Faint Tidal Features in DECaLS Data
• EMERGE: Constraining merging probabilities and timescales of close galaxy pairs
• The Most Massive Early-type Galaxies Exhibit Tidal Features More Frequently in Lower-density Environments
• STRRINGS: STReams in Residual Images of Nearby GalaxieS
• The Fundamental Plane Is Not a Plane: Warped Nature of the Fundamental Plane of Early-type Galaxies and Its Implication for Galaxy Formation
• Elliptical (E) and ellicular (ES) galaxies in the M_bh-M_*,sph diagram, and a merger-driven explanation for the origin of ES galaxies, anti-truncated stellar discs in lenticular galaxies, and the Sersicification of E galaxy light profiles