Galaxy Evolution Explorer Ultraviolet Color-Magnitude Relations and Evidence of Recent Star Formation in Early-Type Galaxies

By S. Yi, Seok-Jin Yoon, S. Kaviraj, J. Deharveng, R. Rich, Samir Salim, A. Boselli, Young-Wook Lee, C. Ree, Y. Sohn and 25 more. 2004

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have used the Galaxy Evolution Explorer UV photometric data to construct a first near-UV (NUV) color-magnitude relation (CMR) for the galaxies preclassified as early-type by Sloan Digital Sky Survey studies. The NUV CMR is a powerful tool for tracking the recent star formation history in early-type galaxies, owing to its high sensitivity to the presence of young stellar populations. Our NUV CMR for UV-weak galaxies shows a well-defined slope and thus will be useful for interpreting the rest-frame NUV data of distant galaxies and studying their star formation history. Compared to optical CMRs, the NUV CMR shows a substantially larger scatter, which we interpret as evidence of recent star formation activities. Roughly 15% of the recent epoch (z < 0.13) bright [M(r) < -22] early-type galaxies show a sign of recent (≲1 Gyr) star formation at the 1%-2% level (lower limit) in mass compared to the total stellar mass. This implies that low-level residual star formation was common during the last few billion years even in bright early-type galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a387eee5c42f6864c2219898c47289304dc73dec

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Cappellari
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. C. Conroy
5. T. Naab
6. R. Somerville
7. Thomas J. Cox
8. Volker Springel

In Instrumentation

1. M. Cappellari
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. C. Conroy
5. Thomas J. Cox
6. R. Somerville
7. T. Naab
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, background): “This model cannot account for the population of massive galaxies with small but detectable amounts of recent star formation, seen in the GALEX observations (Yi et al. 2005 argue that the NUV light in C© 2008 The Authors.”
• Observational evidence for AGN feedback in early-type galaxies (2007, background): “TheGALEX UV satellite has found evidence for minor recent star formation in early-type galaxies (Yi et al. 2005), and theSAURONsurvey of 48 nearby elliptical and lenticular galaxies has shown that many of them have (often extended) emission lines and signs of recent star formation as well as CO…”
• Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, background): “However, detailed spectroscopic studies (Trager et al. 2000) as well as near-ultraviolet photometry of early-type galaxies (Ferreras and Silk 2000; Yi et al. 2005; Kaviraj et al. 2007) have confirmed the presence of hot stars in early-type galaxies.”
• Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies (2009, background): “Yi et al. (2005), Kaviraj et al. (2007), and Schawinski et al. (2007) have all found evidence for recent (<∼ 1 Gyr) star formation in 15%−30% of morphologically selected elliptical galaxies, which accounts for 1% − 3% of the stellar mass of the galaxy.”
• The correlation of star formation quenching with internal galaxy properties and environment (2008, background): “The UV provides a much more sensitive probe of the recent star formation history of a galaxy than optical colours alone, which reflect the highly degenerate effects of stellar populations, metallicity and dust extinction (Yi et al. 2005; Kaviraj et al. 2007).”
• The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early-and late-type galaxies (2014, background): “…early-type galaxies ceases and then does not re-start except for a minor frosting of new stellar populations (seen mostly in the ultraviolet; e.g. Yi et al. 2005; Kaviraj et al. 2007; Schawinski et al. 2007a), except when a new disc forms through the acquisition of a sufficient supply of cold…”
• Ages and metallicities of early-type galaxies in the SDSS: new insight into the physical origin of the colour-magnitude and the Mg2-sigmaV relations (2006, result): “Our results represent further evidence for a shift in stellar growth toward less massive galaxies in recent epochs (Cowie et al. 1996; De Lucia et al. 2004; Kodama & et al. 2004; Yi et al. 2005; Treu et al. 2005).”
• Galaxy Zoo: a sample of blue early-type galaxies at low redshift (2009, background): “…to determine their role in the recent star formation histories of early-type galaxies and explore whether satellite accretion could produce the blue UV colours that seem to be common amongst the low redshift early-type population (Yi et al. 2005; Schawinski et al. 2007a; Kaviraj et al. 2007c).”
• The role of minor mergers in the recent star formation history of early-type galaxies (2007, methodology): “Following the early work of Yi et al. (2005), Kaviraj et al. (2007b; K07 hereafter) have demonstrated that, while a negligible fraction of the early-type population has photometry consistent with no star formation within the last 2 Gyrs, at least 30% show unambiguous signs of RSF, with stellar mass…”
• Environment and self-regulation in galaxy formation (2009, result): “It can also be seen that rejuvenation occurs mostly in lower mass galaxies with log σ < 2.2 as previously found in other studies (T05; Yi et al. 2005; Thomas & Davies 2006; Donas et al. 2007).”
• The ATLAS3D Project – XXVIII. Dynamically driven star formation suppression in early-type galaxies (2014, background): “Low level residual star formation has also been detected through studies of UV emission (e.g. Yi et al. 2005; Kaviraj et al. 2007; Salim & Rich 2010; Wei et al. 2010), optical emission lines (e.g. Crocker et al. 2011) and infra-red emission (e.g. Knapp et al. 1989; Combes, Young & Bureau 2007;…”