Reconciling Observations of the Galaxy Merger Rate

Details Reconciling Observations of the Galaxy Merger Rate Reconciling Observations of the Galaxy Merger Rate

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21342301l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #423.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.243

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

A key obstacle to measuring the galaxy merger rate and its role in galaxy evolution is the difficulty in constraining the merger properties and time-scales from instantaneous snapshots of the real universe. We present the first realistic constraints on the merger observability timescales from a large suite of galaxy merger simulations which have been processed through the Monte-Carlo radiative transfer code SUNRISE. With the resulting images, we examine the dependence of quantitative morphology and projected galaxy pair separation in the SDSS g-band on merger stage, dust, viewing angle, orbital parameters, gas properties, supernova feedback, and mass ratio. We find that the different approaches to identifying galaxy mergers are sensitive to different merger mass ratios and gas fractions. Using the timescales from our simulations, we attempt to reconcile the estimates of the galaxy merger rate as measured by asymmetry, Gini-M20, and the pair fraction in the Extended Groth Strip. We also find that the relative fractions of objects identified by quantitative morphology and close pairs can constrain the relative fraction of major/minor and gas-rich/gas-poor mergers.

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