The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies. XIV. Disc breaks and interactions through ultra-deep optical imaging

Abstract

In the standard cosmological model of galaxy evolution, mergers and interactions play a fundamental role in shaping galaxies. Galaxies that are currently isolated are thus interesting, allowing us to distinguish between internal and external processes affecting the galactic structure. However, current observational limits may obscure crucial information in the low-mass or low-brightness regime. We use optical imaging of a subsample of the AMIGA catalogue of isolated galaxies to explore the impact of different factors on the structure of these galaxies. We study the type of disc break as a function of the degree of isolation and the presence of interaction indicators like tidal streams or plumes only detectable in the low surface brightness regime. We present deep optical imaging of a sample of 25 isolated galaxies. Through careful data processing and analysis techniques, the surface brightness limits achieved are comparable to those to be obtained on the 10-year LSST coadds. The extreme depth of our imaging allows us to study the interaction signatures of 20 galaxies, given that the presence of Galactic cirrus is a strong limiting factor in the characterisation of interactions for the remaining 5 of them. We detect previously unreported interaction features in 8 (40%) galaxies in our sample. We identify 9 galaxies (36%) showing an exponential disc (Type I), 14 galaxies (56%) with down-bending (Type II) profile and only 2 galaxies (8%) with up-bending (Type III) profiles. Isolated galaxies have considerably more purely exponential discs and fewer up-bending surface brightness profiles than field or cluster galaxies. We suggest that major mergers produce up-bending profiles while a threshold in star formation probably forms down-bending profiles. Unperturbed galaxies, evolving slowly with a low star formation rate could cause the high rate of Type I discs in isolated galaxies observed.

arXiv comment20 pages, 7 figures, and 2 tables (incl. 2 appendix). Accepted for publication in A&A. Images and profiles will be made publicly available upon publication

References in corpus (85)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• Measuring Reddening with SDSS Stellar Spectra and Recalibrating SFD
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• Secular Evolution and the Formation of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies
• The epochs of early-type galaxy formation as a function of environment
• The Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey: Overview and Survey Design
• Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary astronomical images
• The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview
• Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment
• The bimodal galaxy color distribution: dependence on luminosity and environment
• Second Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameters
• Galaxy Merger Morphologies and Time-Scales from Simulations of Equal-Mass Gas-Rich Disc Mergers
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• Beyond Inside-Out Growth: Formation and Evolution of Disk Outskirts
• The Atlas3D project -- XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
• The structure of galactic disks: Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS
• Tidally-Triggered Star Formation in Close Pairs of Galaxies
• A subarcsecond resolution near-infrared study of Seyfert and `normal' galaxies: II. Morphology
• Anti-Truncation of Disks in Early-Type Barred Galaxies
• Ultra Low Surface Brightness Imaging with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array
• Galaxies at the extremes: Ultra-diffuse galaxies in the Virgo Cluster
• Color Profiles of Spiral Galaxies: Clues on Outer-Disk Formation Scenarios
• The Burrell Schmidt Deep Virgo Survey: Tidal Debris, Galaxy Halos, and Diffuse Intracluster Light in the Virgo Cluster
• Beyond 31 mag/arcsec^2: the low surface brightness frontier with the largest optical telescopes
• Noise Based Detection and Segmentation of Nebulous Objects
• The Origin of the Light Distribution in Spiral Galaxies
• The AMIGA project. I. Optical characterization of the CIG catalog
• The IAC Stripe 82 Legacy Project: a wide-area survey for faint surface brightness astronomy
• Tracing kinematic (mis)alignments in CALIFA merging galaxies: Stellar and ionized gas kinematic orientations at every merger stage
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies. V. Quantification of the isolation
• Galactic cirri in deep optical imaging
• Interpreting Debris from Satellite Disruption In External Galaxies
• Galaxy Pairs in the 2dFGRS II. Effects of interactions on star formation in groups and clusters
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 Imaging Data: Depth-Optimized Co-adds Over 300 Deg^2 in Five Filters
• The influence of diffuse scattered light I. The PSF and its role to observations of the edge-on galaxy NGC 5907
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies IX. Molecular gas properties
• The Outer Disks of Early-Type Galaxies. II. Surface-Brightness Profiles of Unbarred Galaxies and Trends with Hubble Type
• Interacting galaxies in the nearby Universe: only moderate increase of star formation
• Removing Internal Reflections from Deep Imaging Datasets
• Properties of Isolated Disk Galaxies
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies: VIII. The rate of asymmetric HI profiles in spiral galaxies
• Preparing for low surface brightness science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: characterisation of tidal features from mock images
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey extended point spread functions
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies - II. Morphological refinement
• A unified picture of breaks and truncations in spiral galaxies from SDSS and S^{4}G imaging
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies. IV. A catalogue of neighbours around isolated galaxies
• Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar Stream Legacy Survey
• Formation of S0 galaxies through mergers. V. Antitruncated stellar discs resulting from major mergers
• Color Profiles of Disk Galaxies since z~1: Probing Outer Disk Formation Scenarios
• Introducing the LBT Imaging of Galactic Halos and Tidal Structures (LIGHTS) survey. A preview of the low surface brightness Universe to be unveiled by LSST
• Discovery of a stellar tidal stream around the Whale galaxy, NGC 4631
• The Structure and Stellar Content of the Outer Disks of Galaxies: A New View from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey
• Disk galaxies with broken luminosity profiles from cosmological simulations
• Convergence of Lobatto-type Runge-Kutta methods for partitioned differential-algebraic systems of index 2
• The missing light of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Properties of tidally-triggered vertical disk perturbations
• No direct coupling between bending of galaxy disc stellar age and light profiles
• A Strong Dichotomy in S0 Disk Profiles Between the Virgo Cluster and the Field
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies XII. Revision of the isolation degree for AMIGA galaxies using the SDSS
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies XIII. The HI content of an almost "nurture free" sample
• Galaxies in voids assemble their stars slowly
• The environmental dependence of the structure of outer galactic discs in STAGES spiral galaxies
• The Red and Featureless Outer Disks of Nearby Spiral Galaxies
• A Deconvolution Technique to Correct Deep Images of Galaxies from Instrumental Scattered Light
• Optimising and comparing source extraction tools using objective segmentation quality criteria
• Discovery and analysis of low-surface-brightness galaxies in the environment of NGC 1052
• The effect of environment on the structure of disc galaxies
• On the varied origins of up-bending breaks in galaxy disks
• How to bend galaxy disc profiles II: stars surfing the bar in Type-III discs
• Direct detection of galaxy stellar halos : NGC 3957 as a test case
• IRAC Near-Infrared Features in the Outer Parts of S4G Galaxies
• Properties of extragalactic thick discs recovered from ultra-deep Stripe82 imaging
• Massive Early-Type Galaxies in the HSC-SSP: Flux Fraction of Tidal Features and Merger Rates
• The Prevalence of Type III Disc Breaks in HI-rich and Low-spin Galaxies
• The Extended Disk Galaxy Exploration Science Survey: Description and Surface Brightness Profile Properties
• HI in the Outskirts of Nearby Galaxies
• Photometric scaling relations of antitruncated stellar discs in S0-Scd galaxies
• A ~ 12 kpc HI extension and other HI asymmetries in the isolated galaxy CIG 340 (IC 2487)
• New Constraints on the Origin of Surface Brightness Profile Breaks of Disk Galaxies from MaNGA
• Unveiling the environment and faint features of the isolated galaxy CIG 96 with deep optical and HI observations
• Evolution of the anti-truncated stellar profiles of S0 galaxies since $z=0.6$ in the SHARDS survey: II - Structural and photometric evolution
• Satellites and central galaxies in SDSS: the influence of interactions on their properties
• Fully Adaptive Bayesian Algorithm for Data Analysis, FABADA

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Deep anatomy of nearby galaxies
• CAVITY, Calar Alto Void Integral-field Treasury surveY and project extension
• The impact of environment on size: Galaxies are 50% smaller in the Fornax Cluster compared to the field
• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- The surface brightness and colour profiles of the far outskirts of galaxies in the Perseus cluster
• The Complete Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (CS${}^4$G)
• Bulgeless Evolution And the Rise of Discs (BEARD) I. Physical drivers of the mass-size relation for Milky Way-like galaxies
• High-resolution HI mapping of nearby extremely metal-poor blue compact dwarf galaxies
• Revisiting the structure of galactic disks with deep imaging
• Multiwavelength properties of the low-redshift isolated galaxies with active nuclei modelled with CIGALE