Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Comparing Visually and Spectroscopically Identified Galaxy Merger Samples

Abstract

We conduct a comparison of the merging galaxy populations detected by a sample of visual identification of tidal features around galaxies as well as spectroscopically-detected close pairs of galaxies to determine whether our method of selecting merging galaxies biases our understanding of galaxy interactions. Our volume-limited parent sample consists of 852 galaxies from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey in the redshift range $0.04\le z\le 0.20$ and stellar mass range $9.50\le$ log${}_{10}(M_{\star }/{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot })\le 11.0$. We conduct our comparison using images from the Ultradeep layer of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) to visually-classify galaxies with tidal features and compare these to the galaxies in the GAMA spectroscopic close-pair sample. We identify 198 galaxies possessing tidal features, resulting in a tidal feature fraction $f_{\mathrm{tidal}}$ = 0.23 $\pm$ 0.02. We also identify 80 galaxies involved in close pairs, resulting in a close pair fraction $f_{\mathrm{pair}}$ = 0.09 $\pm$ 0.01. Upon comparison of our tidal feature and close pair samples we identify 42 galaxies that are present in both samples, yielding a fraction $f_{\mathrm{both}}$ = 0.05 $\pm$ 0.01. We find evidence to suggest that the sample of close pairs of galaxies is more likely to detect early-stage mergers, where two separate galaxies are still visible, and the tidal feature sample detects later-stage mergers, where only one galaxy nucleus remains visible. The overlap of the close pair and tidal feature samples likely detect intermediate-stage mergers. Our results are in good agreement with the predictions of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations regarding the populations of merging galaxies detected by close pair and tidal feature samples.

arXiv commentAccepted in MNRAS

References in corpus (61)

• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Hierarchical Galaxy Formation
• Accurate photometric redshifts for the CFHT Legacy Survey calibrated using the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): survey diagnostics and core data release
• The Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey: Overview and Survey Design
• The Relationship Between Stellar Light Distributions of Galaxies and their Formation Histories
• Merger rates in hierarchical models of galaxy formation. II: Comparison with N-body simulations
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly: Stellar Mass Estimates
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): end of survey report and data release 2
• Second Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• On the Estimation of Confidence Intervals for Binomial Population Proportions in Astronomy: The Simplicity and Superiority of the Bayesian Approach
• The Major and Minor Galaxy Merger Rates at z < 1.5
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): The GAMA Galaxy Group Catalogue (G3Cv1)
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The galaxy stellar mass function at z < 0.06
• Third Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• The Frequency of Tidal Features Associated with Nearby Luminous Elliptical Galaxies from a Statistically Complete Sample
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the G02 field, Herschel-ATLAS target selection and Data Release 3
• New Techniques for Relating Dynamically Close Galaxy Pairs to Merger and Accretion Rates : Application to the SSRS2 Redshift Survey
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Data Release 4 and the z < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions
• The Structures of Distant Galaxies I: Galaxy Structures and the Merger Rate to z~3 in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
• Introducing the NewHorizon simulation: Galaxy properties with resolved internal dynamics across cosmic time
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: 16 < B_MGC < 24 galaxy counts and the calibration of the local galaxy luminosity function
• Galaxy Zoo: The properties of merging galaxies in the nearby Universe - local environments, colours, masses, star-formation rates and AGN activity
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Spectroscopic analysis
• The Structures of Distant Galaxies - III: The Merger History of over 20,000 Massive Galaxies at z < 1.2
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Galaxy close-pairs, mergers, and the future fate of stellar mass
• Photometric Redshift with Bayesian Priors on Physical Properties of Galaxies
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: The connection between close pairs and asymmetry; implications for the galaxy merger rate
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly: Deconstructing Bimodality - I. Red ones and blue ones
• The role of mergers in driving morphological transformation over cosmic time
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): FUV, NUV, ugrizYJHK Petrosian, Kron and Sèrsic photometry
• Faint Tidal Features in Galaxies within the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Wide Fields
• Deep learning predictions of galaxy merger stage and the importance of observational realism
• Individual Stellar Halos of Massive Galaxies Measured to 100 kpc at $0.3<z<0.5$ using Hyper Suprime-Cam
• Discovery of a Giant Stellar Tidal Stream Around the Disk Galaxy NGC 4013
• Tidal debris morphology and the orbits of satellite galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: mass as the driver of the kinematic morphology - density relation in clusters
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: Dynamically Close Galaxy Pairs and the Global Merger Rate
• Identifying Galaxy Mergers in Observations and Simulations with Deep Learning
• Census and classification of low-surface-brightness structures in nearby early-type galaxies from the MATLAS survey
• Preparing for low surface brightness science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: characterisation of tidal features from mock images
• Massive star formation in Wolf-Rayet galaxies. V: Star formation rates, masses and the importance of galaxy interactions
• AGN in dwarf galaxies: frequency, triggering processes and the plausibility of AGN feedback
• Tidal Features at 0.05<z<0.45 in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program: Properties and Formation Channels
• Identification of Low Surface Brightness Tidal Features in Galaxies Using Convolutional Neural Networks
• The Origin of Faint Tidal Features Around Galaxies in the RESOLVE Survey
• Automated Distant Galaxy Merger Classifications from Space Telescope Images using the Illustris Simulation
• Discovery of a stellar tidal stream around the Whale galaxy, NGC 4631
• Post-merger Signatures of Red-sequence Galaxies in Rich Abell Clusters at $z\lesssim 0.1$
• Weak Lensing Reveals a Tight Connection Between Dark Matter Halo Mass and the Distribution of Stellar Mass in Massive Galaxies
• Galaxy interactions in IllustrisTNG-100, I: The power and limitations of visual identification
• The Environmental Dependence of the Incidence of Galactic Tidal Features
• Reaching for the Edge I: Probing the Outskirts of Massive Galaxies with HSC, DECaLS, SDSS, and Dragonfly
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Extended Intra-Group Light in a group at $z=0.2$ from deep Hyper-Suprime Cam images
• Quantified HI Morphology IV: The Merger Fraction and Rate in WHISP
• Massive Early-Type Galaxies in the HSC-SSP: Flux Fraction of Tidal Features and Merger Rates
• Tidal Tails of Minor Mergers: Star Formation Efficiency in the Western Tail of NGC 2782
• Tidal Tails of Minor Mergers II: Comparing Star Formation in the Tidal Tails of NGC 2782
• A Tale of Two Tails: Exploring Stellar Populations in the Tidal Tails of NGC 3256
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) Survey: The Merging Potential of Brightest Group Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Galaxy Mergers in the Epoch of Reionization I: A JWST Study of Pair Fractions, Merger Rates, and Stellar Mass Accretion Rates at $z=4.5-11.5$
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Using Tidal Streams and Shells to Trace the Dynamical Evolution of Massive Galaxies
• Characterising Tidal Features Around Galaxies in Cosmological Simulations
• Galaxy merger challenge: A comparison study between machine learning-based detection methods
• Uncovering Tidal Treasures: Automated Classification of Faint Tidal Features in DECaLS Data
• Determining the time before or after a galaxy merger event
• STRRINGS: STReams in Residual Images of Nearby GalaxieS
• Dynamically close galaxy pairs from the unWISE survey: Testing the merger-AGN-star formation connection
• A Simulation of the Dependence of Tidal Interaction on Galaxy Type in Compact Groups