The spatially-resolved effect of mergers on the stellar mass assembly of MaNGA galaxies

Abstract

Understanding the origin of stars within a galaxy - whether formed in-situ or accreted from other galaxies (ex-situ) - is key to constraining its evolution. Spatially resolving these components provides crucial insights into a galaxy's mass assembly history. We aim to predict the spatial distribution of ex-situ stellar mass fraction in MaNGA galaxies, and to identify distinct assembly histories based on the radial gradients of these predictions in the central regions. We employ a diffusion model trained on mock MaNGA analogs (MaNGIA), derived from the TNG50 cosmological simulation. The model learns to predict the posterior distribution of resolved ex-situ stellar mass fraction maps, conditioned on stellar mass density, velocity, and velocity dispersion gradient maps. After validating the model on an unseen test set from MaNGIA, we apply it to MaNGA galaxies to infer the spatially-resolved distribution of their ex-situ stellar mass fractions - i.e. the fraction of stellar mass in each spaxel originating from mergers. We identify four broad categories of ex-situ mass distributions: flat gradient, in-situ dominated; flat gradient, ex-situ dominated; positive gradient; and negative gradient. The vast majority of MaNGA galaxies fall in the first category - flat gradients with low ex-situ fractions - confirming that in-situ star formation is the main assembly driver for low- to intermediate-mass galaxies. At high stellar masses, the ex-situ maps are more diverse, highlighting the key role of mergers in building the most massive systems. Ex-situ mass distributions correlate with morphology, star-formation activity, stellar kinematics, and environment, indicating that accretion history is a primary factor shaping massive galaxies. Finally, by tracing their assembly histories in TNG50, we link each class to distinct merger scenarios, ranging from secular evolution to merger-dominated growth.

arXiv comment15 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A

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