Related papers: Major Merging: The Way to Make a Massive, Passive …
Massive galaxies at high-z have smaller effective radii than those today, but similar central densities. Their size growth therefore relates primarily to the evolving abundance of low-density material. Various models have been proposed to…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
We report the identification of elongated (triaxial or prolate) galaxies in cosmological simulations at $z\simeq2$. These are preferentially low-mass galaxies ($M_s \le 10^{9.5} \ M_\odot$), residing in dark-matter (DM) haloes with strongly…
Recent studies of galaxies ~2-3 Gyr after the Big Bang have revealed large, turbulent rotating systems. The existence of well-ordered rotation in galaxies during this peak epoch of cosmic star formation may suggest that gas accretion…
We spectroscopically identified 7 massive evolved galaxies with magnitudes 17.8<K<18.4 at 1.3<z<1.7 over an area of ~160 arcmin^2 of the MUNICS survey. Their rest-frame K-band absolute magnitudes are -26.8<M$_K<-26.1 (5L*<L_K<10L*) and the…
We estimate the galaxy stellar mass function and stellar mass density for star-forming and quiescent galaxies with 0.2<z<4. We construct a deep K<24 sample of 220000 galaxies selected using the UltraVISTA DR1 data release. Our analysis is…
We use semi-analytical modelling techniques to investigate the progenitor morphologies of present day ellipticals. We find that, independent of the environment, the fraction of mergers of bulge dominated galaxies (early-types) increases…
Three billion years after the big bang (at redshift z=2), half of the most massive galaxies were already old, quiescent systems with little to no residual star formation and extremely compact with stellar mass densities at least an order of…
The stellar mass-halo mass relation is a key constraint in all semi-analytic, numerical, and semi-empirical models of galaxy formation and evolution. However, its exact shape and redshift dependence remain debated. Several recent works…
Previous studies have shown that galaxies with minor companions exhibit an elevated star formation rate. We reverse this inquiry, constructing a volume-limited sample of \simL\star (Mr \leq -19.5 + 5 log h) galaxies from the Sloan Digital…
The formation mechanism of high-concentration dwarf galaxies is still a mystery. We perform a comparative study of the intrinsic shape of nearby low-mass galaxies with different stellar concentration. The intrinsic shape is parameterized by…
The evolution of our Universe is strongly influenced by the attractive force of gravity. A key aspect of this evolution, therefore, is the merging of galaxies. Here, we explore the role of mergers in shaping the properties of massive…
An increasing amount of observational evidence supports the notion that there are two modes of star formation: a quiescent mode in disk-like galaxies, and a starburst mode, which is generally interpreted as driven by merging. Using a…
We use multi-wavelength (0.12 - 500 micron) photometry from Herschel-ATLAS, WISE, UKIDSS, SDSS and GALEX, to study 23 nearby spheroidal galaxies with prominent dust lanes (DLSGs). DLSGs are considered to be remnants of recent minor mergers,…
In the simplest scenario, disk galaxies form predominantly in halos with high angular momentum and quiet recent assembly history, whereas spheroids are the slowly-rotating remnants of repeated merging events. We explore these assumptions…
Dissipationless (gas-free or "dry") mergers have been suggested to play a major role in the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, particularly in growing their mass and size without altering their stellar populations. We perform a…
Using a mass-selected ($M_{\star} \ge 10^{11} M_{\odot}$) sample of 198 galaxies at 0 < z < 3.0 with HST/NICMOS $H_{160}$-band images from the COSMOS survey, we find evidence for the evolution of the pair fraction above z ~ 2, an epoch in…
We revisit collisionless major and minor mergers of spheroidal galaxies in the context of the size evolution of elliptical galaxies. The simulations are performed as a series of mergers with mass-ratios of 1:1 and 1:10 for models…
It has been widely remarked that compact, massive, elliptical-like galaxies are abundant at high redshifts but exceedingly rare in the Universe today, implying significant evolution such that their sizes at z ~ 2+/-0.6 have increased by…
We use the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey to measure the local Universe mass dependent merger fraction and merger rate using galaxy pairs and the CAS structural method, which identifies highly asymmetric merger candidate galaxies.…