Stellar Population Diagnostics of Elliptical Galaxy Formation

By A. Renzini. 2006

350 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Major progress has been achieved in recent years in mapping the properties of passively-evolving, early-type galaxies (ETG) from the local universe all the way to redshift ∼2. Here, age and metallicity estimates for local cluster and field ETGs are reviewed as based on color-magnitude, color-σ , and fundamental plane relations, as well as on spectral-line indices diagnostics. The results of applying the same tools at high redshifts are then discussed, and their consistency with the low-redshift results is assessed. Most low- as well as high-redshift (z ∼ 1) observations consistently indicate (a) a formation redshift z 3 for the bulk of stars in cluster ETGs, with their counterparts in low-density environments being on average ∼1–2 Gyr younger, i.e., formed at z 1.5–2; (b) the duration of the major star-formation phase anticorrelates with galaxy mass, and the oldest stellar populations are found in the most massive galaxies. With increasing redshift there is evidence for a decrease in the number density of ETGs, especially of the less massive ones, whereas existing data appear to suggest that most of the most-massive ETGs were already fully assembled at z ∼ 1. Beyond this redshift, the space density of ETGs starts dropping significantly, and as ETGs disappear, a population of massive, strongly clustered, starburst galaxies progressively becomes more and more prominent, which makes them the likely progenitors to ETGs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4752c0a7e07643fb266a9ef98effae6fb2f557ec

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Conroy
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. M. Cappellari
5. T. Naab
6. R. Dav'e
7. P. V. van Dokkum
8. D. M. Alexander

In Instrumentation

1. C. Conroy
2. M. Cappellari
3. P. Hopkins
4. L. Hernquist
5. R. Dav'e
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. T. Naab
8. A. Renzini

Citations in the corpus

• GMASS ultradeep spectroscopy of galaxies at $z$ ~ 2 - II. Superdense passive galaxies: how did they form and evolve? (2008, background): “A–0687 type galaxies (ETGs) are crucial to investigate the cosmic history of massive galaxies (e.g. Renzini 2006 and references therein).”
• Raising the bar: new constraints on the Hubble parameter with cosmic chronometers at z ∼ 2 (2015, background): “As pointed out by many authors (for an extensive review, see Renzini 2006),massive and passive early-type galaxies represent the ideal population to address the first point, having assembled their mass at high redshift and being passively evolving since then.”
• Toward a Better Understanding of Cosmic Chronometers: A New Measurement of H(z) at z ∼ 0.7 (2021, background): “On the inclusion of lower-mass passive galaxies According to several studies, the evolution of passive galaxies follows a downsizing pattern, with more massive galaxies forming earlier and faster than less massive ones (e.g., Renzini 2006; Pozzetti et al. 2010; Thomas et al. 2010).”
• Evolutionary stellar population synthesis with MILES – II. Scaled-solar and α-enhanced models (2015, background): “Such departure from the solar abundance pattern is generally attributed to short formation time-scales (<1 Gyr) for the bulk of their stellar populations (see the reviews of e.g. Trager et al. 1998, 2000; Renzini 2006; Conroy 2013, and references therein).”
• Globular cluster systems in nearby dwarf galaxies – III. Formation efficiencies of old globular clusters (2010, background): “In addition, the fraction of low-mass peculiar/irregular galaxies increases with redshift (e.g., Renzini 2006; Conselice et al. 2008).”
• UV-extended E-MILES stellar population models: young components in massive early-type galaxies (2016, positive): “With this type of analysis it has been possible to conclude that massive ETGs have mainly old stellar populations with the bulk of their stars formed at high redshift in very short timescales (e.g. Renzini 2006).”
• Dynamical modelling of luminous and dark matter in 17 Coma early-type galaxies (2007, background): “1 I N T RO D U C T I O N Elliptical galaxies are numerous among the brightest galaxies and they harbour a significant fraction of the present-day stellar mass in the Universe (Fukugita, Hogan & Peebles 1998; Renzini 2006).”
• Two-dimensional kinematics of SLACS lenses – III. Mass structure and dynamics of early-type lens galaxies beyond z ≃ 0.1 (2011, background): “…the fundamental constituents of the local observable Universe, contributing to most of the total s ellar mass (Fukugita, Hogan, & Peebles 1998; Renzini 2006), and itis therefore only natural that these systems have become the focus of ⋆ E-mail: mbarnabe@stanford.edu a vast amount of…”
• Erratum: Recovering galaxy stellar population properties from broad-band spectral energy distribution fitting (2012, background): “The fit is clearly fooled by the overshining in combination with the age-dust degeneracy (see Renzini 2006, for a detailed description of this degeneracy and its effects).”
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: the B-band attenuation of bulge and disc light and the implied cosmic dust and stellar mass densities (2007, result): “We also note that the high opacities leading to our conclusion that the bulges have intrinsically bluer colours is not inconsistent with the observations that bulges show a small spread in apparent colours and exhibit small colour gradients (see review by Renzini 2006).”
• HERSCHEL-ATLAS GALAXY COUNTS AND HIGH-REDSHIFT LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS: THE FORMATION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, result): “…dynamical mass−luminosity) have been known for a long time and have been recently confirmed with very large samples, and shown to persist up to substantial redshifts (Renzini 2006; Clemens et al. 2009; Thomas et al. 2010; Rogers et al. 2010; Peebles & Nusser 2010, and references therein).”
• THE HIDDEN “AGN MAIN SEQUENCE”: EVIDENCE FOR A UNIVERSAL BLACK HOLE ACCRETION TO STAR FORMATION RATE RATIO SINCE z ∼ 2 PRODUCING AN MBH–M* RELATION (2012, background): “Having said that, it is thought the the majority of stars formed at these high redshifts in the M∗ range considered will collapse to form massive bulges by z ∼ 0 (e.g., Renzini 2006), probably due to the effects of mergers.”
• AN OBJECTIVE DEFINITION FOR THE MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2015, background): “This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that virtually all massive ETGs are already in place at z ∼ 1 (Cimatti, Daddi & Renzini 2006), and therefore we do not expect much mass quenching of massive galaxies to take place now.”
• Environment and self-regulation in galaxy formation (2009, background): “…Fundamental Plane and Mg–σ relation have suggested relatively old ages and high formation redshifts already almost two decades ago (see review by Renzini 2006, and references therein), the efforts of the last decade to find correlations between galaxy mass and the three stellar population…”
• A 6% measurement of the Hubble parameter at z∼0.45: direct evidence of the epoch of cosmic re-acceleration (2016, background): “Therefore they are the oldest objects at any redshift [23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29].”
• A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A critical look at variations in extreme environments (2010, methodology): “Renzini (2006) has searched for such an effect by comparing the Fundamental Plane of the Coma cluster in the local Universe, to galaxy clusters at redshifts of z = 0.58 and z = 0.83.”
• The high‐redshift galaxy population in hierarchical galaxy formation models (2006, background): “Recent studies of the high redshift galaxy population have oft n stressed the presence of massive objects with colours similar to those expected for fully formed and passively evolving ellipticals (e.g. Renzini 2006, and references therein).”
• MOSFIRE Spectroscopy of Quiescent Galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5. II. Star Formation Histories and Galaxy Quenching (2018, methodology): “A powerful method to study the past evolution of massive quiescent galaxies is the reconstruction of their star formation history (SFH), which can be done by fitting models to the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) or, when available, spectroscopy (see, e.g., Renzini 2006; Conroy 2013).”