Elliptical galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1

Details Elliptical galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1 Elliptical galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1

2011-11-29

arxiv.org/abs/1111.6993v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

21 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables, submitted to MNRAS

Scientific paper

Present-day massive galaxies are composed mostly of early-type objects. It is unknown whether this was also the case at higher redshifts. In a hierarchical assembling scenario the morphological content of the massive population is expected to change with time from disk-like objects in the early Universe to spheroid-like galaxies at present. In this paper we have probed this theoretical expectation by compiling a large sample of massive (M_{stellar}>10^{11} h_{70}^{-2} M_{Sun}$) galaxies in the redshift interval 0 < z < 3. Our sample of 1082 objects comprises 207 local galaxies selected from SDSS plus 875 objects observed with the HST belonging to the POWIR/DEEP2 and GNS surveys. 639 of our objects have spectroscopic redshifts. Our morphological classification is done in the V-band restframe both quantitatively (using the Sersic index as a morphological proxy) and qualitative (by visual inspection). Using both techniques we find an enormous change on the dominant morphological class with cosmic time. The fraction of early-type galaxies among the massive galaxy population has changed from ~20-30% at z~3 to ~70% at z=0. Elliptical galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1.

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