English

The Fundamental Plane of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z~2

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-02-24 v1

Abstract

We examine the Fundamental Plane (FP) and mass-to-light ratio (M/LM/L) scaling relations using the largest sample of massive quiescent galaxies at 1.5<z<2.51.5<z<2.5 to date. The FP (re,σe,Ier_{e}, \sigma_{e}, I_{e}) is established using 1919 UVJUVJ quiescent galaxies from COSMOS with HubbleHubble SpaceSpace TelescopeTelescope (HST)(HST) HF160WH_{F160W} rest-frame optical sizes and X-shooter absorption line measured stellar velocity dispersions. For a very massive, log(M/M)>11.26{\rm{log}}(M_{\ast}/M_{\odot})>11.26, subset of 8 quiescent galaxies at z>2z>2, from Stockmann et al. (2020), we show that they cannot passively evolve to the local Coma cluster relation alone and must undergo significant structural evolution to mimic the sizes of local massive galaxies. The evolution of the FP and M/LM/L scaling relations, from z=2z=2 to present-day, for this subset are consistent with passive aging of the stellar population and minor merger structural evolution into the most massive galaxies in the Coma cluster and other massive elliptical galaxies from the MASSIVE Survey. Modeling the luminosity evolution from minor merger added stellar populations favors a history of merging with "dry" quiescent galaxies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.05935,
  title  = {The Fundamental Plane of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z~2},
  author = {Mikkel Stockmann and Inger Jørgensen and Sune Toft and Christopher J. Conselice and Andreas Faisst and Berta Margalef-Bentabol and Anna Gallazzi and Stefano Zibetti and Gabriel B. Brammer and Carlos Gómez-Guijarro and Michaela Hirschmann and Claudia D. Lagos and Francesco M. Valentino and Johannes Zabl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.05935},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

17 pages, 6 figures