The Assembly of Massive Galaxies from Near-Infrared Observations of the Hubble Deep Field-South

Fontana, A.; Donnarumma, I.; Vanzella, E.; Giallongo, E.; Menci, Nicola; Nonino, M.; Saracco, P.; Cristiani, S.; D’Odorico, S.; Poli, F.

doi:10.1086/378489

Cited by 139 publications

(229 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This also explains how the YA87 and CC02 models, which do not take mergers into account but rather assume that galaxies originate from a single gas cloud, succeed for dEs, while they fail to reproduce the properties of massive ellipticals. However, all this needs to be reconciled with the observation that the stellar mass density of the universe at redshift z > 2, contained in massive galaxies, is larger than can be accounted for by SAMs (Fontana et al 2003;Somerville et al 2004). Still, the distribution of the dEs in the various univariate diagrams can, if enough dwarf galaxies have been observed for statistically sound statements to be made, put very stringent limits on the redshift dependence of the star-formation timescale in semi-analytical or numerical simulations of galaxy evolution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation and evolution of dwarf elliptical galaxies

Rijcke¹,

Michielsen²,

Dejonghe³

et al. 2005

A&A

117

123

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Abstract. This paper is the first in a series in which we present the results of an ESO Large Program on the kinematics and internal dynamics of dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs). We obtained deep major and minor axis spectra of 15 dEs and broad-band imaging of 22 dEs. Here, we investigate the relations between the parameters that quantify the structure (B-band luminosity L B , half-light radius R e , and mean surface brightness within the half-light radius I e = L B /2πR 2 e ) and internal dynamics (velocity dispersion σ) of dEs. We confront predictions of the currently popular theories for dE formation and evolution with the observed position of dEs in log L B vs. log σ, log L B vs. log R e , log L B vs. log I e , and log R e vs. log I e diagrams and in the (log σ, log R e , log I e ) parameter space in which bright and intermediate-luminosity elliptical galaxies and bulges of spirals define a Fundamental Plane (FP). In order to achieve statistical significance and to cover a parameter interval that is large enough for reliable inferences to be made, we merge the data set presented in this paper with two other recently published, equally large data sets. We show that the dE sequences in the various univariate diagrams are disjunct from those traced by bright and intermediateluminosity elliptical galaxies and bulges of spirals. It appears that semi-analytical models (SAMs) that incorporate quiescent star formation with an essentially z-independent star-formation efficiency, combined with post-merger starbursts and the dynamical response after supernova-driven gas-loss, are able to reproduce the position of the dEs in the various univariate diagrams. SAMs with star-formation efficiencies that rise as a function of redshift are excluded since they leave the observed sequences traced by dEs virtually unpopulated. dEs tend to lie above the FP and the FP residual declines as a function of luminosity. Again, models that take into account the response after supernova-driven mass-loss correctly predict the position of dEs in the (log σ, log R e , log I e ) parameter space as well as the trend of the FP residual as a function of luminosity. While these findings are clearly a success for the hierarchical-merging picture of galaxy formation, they do not necessarily invalidate the alternative "harassment" scenario, which posits that dEs stem from perturbed and stripped late-type disk galaxies that entered clusters and groups of galaxies about 5 Gyr ago.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation and evolution of dwarf elliptical galaxies

Rijcke¹,

Michielsen²,

Dejonghe³

et al. 2005

A&A

117

123

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“…On the multicolour catalog described above we applied our photometric redshift technique, which was described in detail in Giallongo et al (1998) and Fontana et al (2000) (F00 hereafter) which proved to be extremely successful in the HDFN/S (Fontana et al 2003) and in the K20 data sets (Cimatti et al 2002;Fontana et al 2004).…”

Section: Photometric Redshiftsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The GOODS-MUSIC sample: a multicolour catalog of near-IR selected galaxies in the GOODS-South field

Grazian¹,

Fontana²,

Santis³

et al. 2006

A&A

Self Cite

339

547

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Aims. We present a high quality multiwavelength (from 0.3 to 8.0 µm) catalog of the large and deep area in the GOODS Southern Field covered by the deep near-IR observations obtained with the ESO VLT. Methods. The catalog is entirely based on public data: in our analysis, we have included the F435W, F606W, F775W and F850LP ACS images, the JHKs VLT data, the Spitzer data provided by IRAC instrument (3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8.0 µm), and publicly available U-band data from the 2.2ESO and VLT-VIMOS. We describe in detail the procedures adopted to obtain this multiwavelength catalog. In particular, we developed a specific software for the accurate "PSF-matching" of space and ground-based images of different resolution and depth (ConvPhot), of which we analyse performances and limitations. We have included both z-selected, as well as Ks-selected objects, yielding a unique, self-consistent catalog. The largest fraction of the sample is 90% complete at z 26 or Ks 23.8 (AB scale). Finally, we cross-correlated our data with all the spectroscopic catalogs available to date, assigning a spectroscopic redshift to more than 1000 sources. Results. The final catalog is made up of 14 847 objects, at least 72 of which are known stars, 68 are AGNs, and 928 galaxies with spectroscopic redshift (668 galaxies with reliable redshift determination). We applied our photometric redshift code to this data set, and the comparison with the spectroscopic sample shows that the quality of the resulting photometric redshifts is excellent, with an average scatter of only 0.06. The full catalog, which we named GOODS-MUSIC (MUltiwavelength Southern Infrared Catalog), including the spectroscopic information, is made publicly available, together with the software specifically designed to this end.

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“…The SED technique employed for this work has been already intensively tested in previous papers (Fontana et al 2003(Fontana et al , 2004Grazian et al 2006;Santini et al 2012). It is based on the comparison between the observed multi-color SED of each galaxy with those obtained from a set of reference synthetic spectra from stellar population models.…”

Section: The Sed Fittingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mass threshold in the number density of passive galaxies atz~ 2

Sommariva

Fontana

Lamastra

et al. 2014

A&A

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The process that quenched star formation in galaxies at intermediate and high redshifts is still the subject of considerable debate. One way to investigate this puzzling issue is to study the number density of quiescent galaxies at z 2 and its dependence on mass. Here we present the results of a new study based on very deep K s -band imaging (with the HAWK-I instrument on the VLT) of two HST CANDELS fields (the UKIDSS Ultra-deep survey (UDS) field and GOODS-South). The new HAWK-I data (taken as part of the HUGS VLT Large Program) reach detection limits of K s > 26 (AB mag). We have combined this imaging with the other groundbased and HST data in the CANDELS fields to select a sample of passively-evolving galaxies in the redshift range 1.4 < z < 2.5 (via the pBzK color-based selection criterion). Thanks to the depth and wide area coverage of our imaging, we have been able to extend the selection of quiescent galaxies to a magnitude fainter than previous analyses. Through extensive simulations we demonstrate, for the first time, that the observed turnover in the number of quiescent galaxies at K ≥ 22 is not due to incompleteness, but is real. This has enabled us to establish unambiguously that the number counts of quiescent galaxies at z 2 flatten and slightly decline at magnitudes fainter than K s ∼ 22 (AB mag.), in contrast to the number density of star-forming galaxies, which continues to rise to fainter magnitudes. We show that this trend corresponds to a stellar mass threshold M * 10 10.8 M below which the mechanism that halts the star formation in high-redshift galaxies seems to be inefficient. We also show that, while pBzK galaxies at K < 23 are in the redshift range 1.4 < z < 2.5, as expected, at K > 23 a higher redshift population of z 3 pBzK galaxies is detected and dominates the counts at the faintest magnitudes. Finally, we compare the observed pBzK number counts with those of quiescent galaxies extracted from four different semi-analytic models. We find that only two of these models reproduce the observed trend in the number counts, even qualitatively, and that none of the models provides a statistically acceptable description of the number density of quiescent galaxies at these redshifts. We conclude that the mass function of quiescent galaxies as a function of redshift continues to present a key and demanding challenge for proposed models of galaxy formation and evolution.

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The Assembly of Massive Galaxies from Near-Infrared Observations of the Hubble Deep Field-South

Cited by 139 publications

References 25 publications

Formation and evolution of dwarf elliptical galaxies

Formation and evolution of dwarf elliptical galaxies

The GOODS-MUSIC sample: a multicolour catalog of near-IR selected galaxies in the GOODS-South field

A mass threshold in the number density of passive galaxies atz~ 2

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