Early type galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1

By F. Buitrago, Ignacio Trujillo, Christopher J. Conselice, B. Haeussler. 2011

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Present-day massive galaxies are composed mostly of early-type objects. It is unknown whether this was also the case at higher redshifts. In a hierarchical assembling scenario the morphological content of the massive population is expected to change with time from disk-like objects in the early Universe to spheroid-like galaxies at present. In this paper we have probed this theoretical expectation by compiling a large sample of massive (M_{stellar}>10^{11} h_{70}^{-2} M_{Sun}$) galaxies in the redshift interval 0 < z < 3. Our sample of 1082 objects comprises 207 local galaxies selected from SDSS plus 875 objects observed with the HST belonging to the POWIR/DEEP2 and GNS surveys. 639 of our objects have spectroscopic redshifts. Our morphological classification is performed as close as possible to the optical restframe according to the photometric bands available in our observations both quantitatively (using the Sersic index as a morphological proxy) and qualitative (by visual inspection). Using both techniques we find an enormous change on the dominant morphological class with cosmic time. The fraction of early-type galaxies among the massive galaxy population has changed from ~20-30% at z~3 to ~70% at z=0. Early type galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ac9577d9c7fc7f45351013d3d688c06c2b01282

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Citations in the corpus

THE SCUBA-2 COSMOLOGY LEGACY SURVEY: ALMA RESOLVES THE REST-FRAME FAR-INFRARED EMISSION OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES (2014, background): “…samples (M⋆ > 5× 1010 M⊙) containing both star–forming and quiescent galaxies at z = 1–3, have an half–light radius (4 kpc) that is higher than, and a Sérsic index (1.5) which is lower than, our sample of quiescent galaxies (see Patel et al. 2013; Buitrago et al. 2013) and Krogager et al. (2013).”
THE EVOLUTION OF GALAXY NUMBER DENSITY AT z < 8 AND ITS IMPLICATIONS (2016, background): “The red solid line show systems which have light profiles of ellipticals, the blue dotted shows disk profiles, and the green dashed line is an equal mixture of both. for the most massive systems (e.g., Ferguson et al. 2004; Ravindranath et al. 2004; Buitrago et al. 2013).”
Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, background): “…cores eventually results in the prominence of disks with bulges among massive SFGs and quiescent galaxies at z & 1 reported in previous works (e.g., Bundy et al. 2010; Bruce et al. 2012; Bruce et al. 2014a; Buitrago et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Lang et al. 2014; HuertasCompany et al 2015).”
3D-HST+CANDELS: THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY SIZE–MASS DISTRIBUTION SINCE z = 3 (2014, unknown): “…number density of L ∗ early types has strongly increased over the redshift range examined in this paper (0 < z < 3), as was shown by, e.g., Bell et al. (2004); Faber et al. (2007); Brown et al. (2007); Ilbert et al. (2010); Brammer et al. (2011); Buitrago et al. (2013); Muzzin et al. (2013).”
The Evolution of Galaxy Structure Over Cosmic Time (2014, methodology): “…mass and at a constant number density selection, it is apparent that galaxies have lower n values at higher redshifts for the same selection (e.g., Buitrago et al. 2013). this has been interpreted by some to imply that these galaxies are more ’disk-like’ at high redshifts (Bruce et al. 2012),…”