Remnants of recent mergers in nearby early-type galaxies and their classification

Abstract

We search for signatures of recent galaxy close interactions and mergers in a sample of 202 early-type galaxies in the local universe from the public SDSS Stripe82 deep images (${\mu }_r\sim 28.5$ mag arcsec${}^{-2}$). Using two different methods to remove galaxies' smooth and symmetric light distribution, we identify and characterize eleven distinct types of merger remnants embedded in the diffuse light of these early-type galaxies. We discuss how the morphology of merger remnants can result from different kinds of minor and major mergers, and estimate the fraction of early-type galaxies in the local universe with evidence of recent major (27%) and minor (57%) mergers. The merger fractions deduced are higher than in several earlier surveys. Among remnants, we find that shells are the dominant merger debris (54%) associated with early-type galaxies, resulting from both major and minor mergers, with those characteristics of major mergers being significant (24% of shell host galaxies). The most uncommon merger-related structures are boxy isophotes of the stellar distribution and the presence of disk fragments near the cores of galaxies. We develop a classification scheme for these fine structures that may be used to infer their likely genesis histories. The classification is primarily based on the mass ratios of the merged galaxies. This work, when combined with predictions from numerical simulations, indicates that most (if not all) early-type galaxies in the local Universe are continually evolving as a result of (minor) merger activities.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS [with 9 Figures, 3 Tables]

References in corpus (98)

• Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos I: Methods
• The ATLAS3D project - III. A census of the stellar angular momentum within the effective radius of early-type galaxies: unveiling the distribution of Fast and Slow Rotators
• The merger rate of galaxies in the Illustris Simulation: a comparison with observations and semi-empirical models
• Galaxy Zoo 2: detailed morphological classifications for 304,122 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model
• The SAURON project. II. Sample and early results
• The stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation: growth by mergers and the spatial distribution of accreted stars
• The ATLAS3D project - II. Morphologies, kinemetric features and alignment between photometric and kinematic axes of early-type galaxies
• A Catalog of Detailed Visual Morphological Classifications for 14034 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Atlas3D project - VII. A new look at the morphology of nearby galaxies: the kinematic morphology-density relation
• Mergers and Bulge Formation in Lambda-CDM: Which Mergers Matter?
• The Major and Minor Galaxy Merger Rates at z < 1.5
• Galaxy Merger Morphologies and Time-Scales from Simulations of Equal-Mass Gas-Rich Disc Mergers
• Formation of early-type galaxies from cosmological initial conditions
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• Stellar Tidal Streams in Spiral Galaxies of the Local Volume: A Pilot Survey with Modest Aperture Telescopes
• The Centers of Early-Type Galaxies with HST. V. New WFPC2 Photometry
• The Atlas3D project -- XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
• Galaxy mergers with various mass ratios: properties of remnants
• Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the CFRS and LDSS redshift surveys - IV. Influence of mergers in the evolution of faint field galaxies from z~1
• A Classical Morphological Analysis of Galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• Properties of Early-Type, Dry Galaxy Mergers and the Origin of Massive Elliptical Galaxies
• Multiple minor mergers: formation of elliptical galaxies and constraints for the growth of spiral disks
• The Frequency of Tidal Features Associated with Nearby Luminous Elliptical Galaxies from a Statistically Complete Sample
• The Greater Impact of Mergers on the Growth of Massive Galaxies: Implications for Mass Assembly and Evolution Since z~1
• The Properties of Poor Groups of Galaxies: II. X-ray and Optical Comparisons
• Dynamically Close Galaxy Pairs and Merger Rate Evolution in the CNOC2 Redshift Survey
• The merger rate of massive galaxies
• Dynamical Modeling of NGC 7252 and the Return of Tidal Material
• The extended halo of Centaurus A: uncovering satellites, streams, and substructures
• The ATLAS3D project - XVII. Linking photometric and kinematic signatures of stellar discs in early-type galaxies
• A Catalogue of Morphologically Classified Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: North Equatorial Region
• Merging groups and clusters of galaxies from the SDSS data. The catalogue of groups and potentially merging systems
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: The connection between close pairs and asymmetry; implications for the galaxy merger rate
• The Luminosity Dependence of the Galaxy Merger Rate
• A 2-3 billion year old major merger paradigm for the Andromeda galaxy and its outskirts
• The IAC Stripe 82 Legacy Project: a wide-area survey for faint surface brightness astronomy
• Dusty Nuclear Disks and Filaments in Early Type Galaxies
• Effect of galaxy mergers on star formation rates
• Diffuse Tidal Structures in the Halos of Virgo Ellipticals
• First results from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array: the apparent lack of a stellar halo in the massive spiral galaxy M101
• Formation of a polar-ring galaxy in a galaxy merger
• The Narrow-Line Regions of LINERs as Resolved with the Hubble Space Telescope
• Formation and Incidence of Shell Galaxies in the Illustris Simulation
• Tidal debris morphology and the orbits of satellite galaxies
• Peanuts, brezels and bananas: food for thought on the orbital structure of the Galactic bulge
• The Outer Stellar Halos of Galaxies: how Radial Merger Mass Deposition, Shells and Streams depend on Infall-Orbit Configurations
• Probing the merger history of red early-type galaxies with their faint stellar substructures
• Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Merger Rate in ΛCDM Universe
• A Young Blue Tidal Stream in NGC 5128
• On the lifetime of merger features of equal-mass disk mergers
• Centaurus A: morphology and kinematics of the atomic hydrogen
• Galaxy Zoo: Quantifying Morphological Indicators of Galaxy Interaction
• Galaxy disks do not need to survive in the L-CDM paradigm: the galaxy merger rate out to z~1.5 from morpho-kinematic data
• Tidal Features at 0.05<z<0.45 in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program: Properties and Formation Channels
• The Origin of Faint Tidal Features Around Galaxies in the RESOLVE Survey
• Peculiar early-type galaxies in the SDSS Stripe82
• A Comparison of Galaxy Merger History Observations and Predictions from Semi-Analytic Models
• Atlas and Catalog of Collisional Ring Galaxies
• Tidal debris in elliptical galaxies as tracers of mergers with disks
• New criteria for the selection of galaxy close pairs from cosmological simulations: evolution of the major and minor merger fraction in MUSE deep fields
• Enhanced mergers of galaxies in low-redshift clusters
• Characterization of Low Surface Brightness structures in annotated deep images
• The diverse nature and formation paths of slow rotator galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• Cold gas in a complete sample of group-dominant early-type galaxies
• Imaging of the Shell Galaxies NGC 474 and NGC 7600, and Implications for their Formation
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. IV. NGC 4216: A Bombarded Spiral in the Virgo Cluster
• The Pisces-Cetus Supercluster: a remarkable filament of galaxies in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and Sloan Digital Sky surveys
• Galactic Rings Revisited. I. CVRHS Classifications of 3962 Ringed Galaxies from the Galaxy Zoo 2 Database
• Morphology and enhanced star formation in a Cartwheel-like ring galaxy
• Red star-forming and blue passive galaxies in clusters
• A Recent Major Merger Tale for the Closest Giant Elliptical Galaxy Centaurus A
• Young stellar populations in early-type galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The MASSIVE Survey IX: Photometric Analysis of 35 High Mass Early-Type Galaxies with HST WFC3/IR
• Formation channels of slowly rotating early-type galaxies
• LEDA 074886: A remarkable rectangular-looking galaxy
• The Complex North Transition Region of Centaurus A: A Galactic Wind
• Quadruple-peaked spectral line profiles as a tool to constrain gravitational potential of shell galaxies
• A large sample of Kohonen selected E+A (post-starburst) galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Complete Local Volume Groups Sample - II. A study of the Central Radio Galaxies in the High$-$Richness Sub-sample
• NGC 741 - Mergers and AGN feedback on galaxy group scale
• Sumo Puff: Tidal Debris or Disturbed Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy?
• Modelling X-shaped Radio Galaxies: Dynamical and Emission Signatures from the Back-flow model
• Long Tidal Tails in Merging Galaxies and Their Implications
• A giant umbrella-like stellar stream around the tidal ring galaxy NGC 922
• Dynamical Modelling and Emission Signatures of a Candidate Dual AGN with Precessing Radio Jets
• The NGC 4013 tale: a pseudo-bulged, late-type spiral shaped by a major merger
• Multicolor Surface Photometry of Lenticulars I. The Data
• Galaxies with Shells in the Illustris Simulation: Metallicity Signatures
• External gas accretion provides a fresh gas supply to the active S0 galaxy NGC 5077
• Self-consistent triaxial models
• Morphology and surface photometry of a sample of isolated early-type galaxies from deep imaging
• MOND prediction of a new giant shell in the elliptical galaxy NGC3923
• The molecular gas content of shell galaxies
• Discovery of a near-infrared bar and a pseudobulge in the collisional ring galaxy Cartwheel
• Ubiquitous signs of interactions in early-type galaxies with prolate rotation
• An early-type galaxy with an inner star-forming disk

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Constraining the Gravitational Potential from the Projected Morphology of Extragalactic Tidal Streams
• Extragalactic Stellar Tidal Streams in the Dark Energy Survey
• Extragalactic Stellar Tidal Streams: Observations meet Simulation
• 3D spectroscopy with GTC-MEGARA of the triple AGN candidate in SDSS J102700.40+174900.8
• STRRINGS: STReams in Residual Images of Nearby GalaxieS
• Kinematics of the lens host S0 galaxy NGC 1553: role of secular processes
• HI gas in the rejuvenated radio galaxy PKS 2014-55
• Stellar Abundances at the Center of Early Type Galaxies with Fine Structure