The Relation between Morphology and Dynamics of Poor Groups of Galaxies

Details The Relation between Morphology and Dynamics of Poor Groups of Galaxies The Relation between Morphology and Dynamics of Poor Groups of Galaxies

2009-02-15

arxiv.org/abs/0902.2555v1

Astrophys.J.696:1441-1447,2009

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

ApJ accepted, 8 pages, 8 figures

Scientific paper

10.1088/0004-637X/696/2/1441

We investigate the relation between the projected morphology (b/a) and the velocity dispersion (sigma_v) of groups of galaxies using two recently compiled group catalogs, one based on the 2MASS redshift survey and the other on the SDSS Data Release 5 galaxy catalog. We find that the sigma_v of groups is strongly correlated with the group projected b/a and size, with elongated and larger groups having a lower sigma_v. Such a correlation could be attributed to the dynamical evolution of groups, with groups in the initial stages of formation, having small sigma_v, a large size and an elongated shape that reflects the anisotropic accretion of galaxies along filamentary structures. The same sort of correlations, however, could also be reproduced in prolate-like groups, if the net galaxy motion is preferentially along the group elongation, since then the groups oriented close to the line of sight will appear more spherical, will have a small projected size and large sigma_v, while groups oriented close to the sky-plane will appear larger in projection, more elongated, and will have smaller sigma_v. We perform tests that relate only to the dynamical evolution of groups (eg., calculating the fraction of early type galaxies in groups) and indeed we find a strong positive (negative) correlation between the group sigma_v (projected major axis) with the fraction of early type galaxies. We conclude that (a) the observed dependencies of the group sigma_v on the group projected size and b/a, should be attributed mostly to the dynamical state of groups and (b) groups in the local universe do not constitute a family of objects in dynamical equilibrium, but rather a family of cosmic structures that are presently at various stages of their virialization process.

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