Are Red Tidal Features Unequivocal Signatures of Major Dry Mergers?

Abstract

We use a cosmological numerical simulation to study the tidal features produced by a minor merger with an elliptical galaxy. We find that the simulated tidal features are quantitatively similar to the red tidal features, i.e., dry tidal features, recently found in deep images of elliptical galaxies at intermediate redshifts. The minor merger in our simulation does not trigger star formation due to active galactic nuclei heating. Therefore, both the tidal features and the host galaxy are red, i.e. a dry minor merger. The stellar mass of the infalling satellite galaxy is about 10^10 Msun, and the tidal debris reach the surface brightness of mu_R~27 mag arcsec^-2. Thus, we conclude that tidal debris from minor mergers can explain the observed dry tidal features in ellipticals at intermediate redshifts, although other mechanisms (such as major dry mergers) may also be important.

7 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (1)

• Dissipationless Mergers of Elliptical Galaxies and the Evolution of the Fundamental Plane

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Testing the Modern Merger Hypothesis via the Assembly of Massive Blue Elliptical Galaxies in the Local Universe
• Probing Asymmetric Structures in the Outskirts of Galaxies
• The Zurich Environmental Study (ZENS) of Galaxies in Groups along the Cosmic Web. V. Properties and Frequency of Merging Satellites and Centrals in Different Environments
• The Spatial Distributions of Red and Blue Globular Clusters in Major Dry Merger Remnants