Non-parametric morphologies of mergers in the Illustris simulation

We study non-parametric morphologies of mergers events in a cosmological context, using the Illustris project. We produce mock g-band images comparable to observational surveys from the publicly available Illustris simulation idealized mock images at z = 0. We then measure non-parametric indicators: asymmetry, Gini, M-20, clumpiness, and concentration for a set of galaxies with M-* > 10(10) M circle dot. We correlate these automatic statistics with the recent merger history of galaxies and with the presence of close companions. Our main contribution is to assess in a cosmological framework, the empirically derived non-parametric demarcation line and average time- scales used to determine the merger rate observationally. We found that 98 per cent of galaxies above the demarcation line have a close companion or have experienced a recent merger event. On average, merger signatures obtained from the G-M-20 criterion anti- correlate clearly with the elapsing time to the last merger event. We also find that the asymmetry correlates with galaxy pair separation and relative velocity, exhibiting the larger enhancements for those systems with pair separations d < 50 h(-1) kpc and relative velocities V < 350 km s(-1). We find that the G-M-20 is most sensitive to recent mergers (similar to 0.14 Gyr) and to ongoing mergers with stellar mass ratios greater than 0.1. For this indicator, we compute a merger average observability time-scale of similar to 0.2 Gyr, in agreement with previous results and demonstrate that the morphologically derived merger rate recovers the intrinsic total merger rate of the simulation and the merger rate as a function of stellar mass.

Notas

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus

Palabras clave

Methods: numerical, Galaxies: evolution, Galaxies: interactions, Galaxies: structure

Citación

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, 465 (1):1106-1122

URI

http://repositorio.unab.cl/xmlui/handle/ria/3747

Colecciones

FCE - Artículos de Revista

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