2014/09/08 by Jesse van de Sande, Mariska Kriek, Marijn Franx +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Effective radius #Fundamental plane (elliptical galaxies) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Lenticular galaxy #Physics #Population #RADIUS #Redshift #Star formation #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Surface brightness #Velocity dispersion #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/793/2/l31
Accepted for publication in ApJ, 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table
arxiv created 2014/09/08 · openalex publication_date 2014/09/15 · arxiv updated 2015/06/22 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The Fundamental Plane (FP) of early-type galaxies, relating the effective radius, velocity dispersion, and surface brightness, has long been recognized as a unique tool for analyzing galaxy structure and evolution. With the discovery of distant quiescent galaxies and the introduction of high sensitivity near-infrared spectrographs, it is now possible to explore the FP out to z ∼ 2. In this Letter we study the evolution of the FP out to z ∼ 2 using kinematic measurements of massive quiescent galaxies ( M * > 10 11 M ☉ ). We find preliminary evidence for the existence of an FP out to z ∼ 2. The scatter of the FP, however, increases from z ∼ 0 to z ∼ 2, even when taking into account the larger measurement uncertainties at higher redshifts. We find a strong evolution of the zero point from z ∼ 2 to z ∼ 0: Δlog 10 M / L g ∝(− 0.49 ± 0.03) z . In order to assess whether our spectroscopic sample is representative of the early-type galaxy population at all redshifts, we compare their rest-frame g − z colors with those from a larger mass complete sample of quiescent galaxies. At z > 1 we find that the spectroscopic sample is bluer. We use the color offsets to estimate a mass-to-light ratio ( M / L ) correction. The implied FP zero point evolution after correction is significantly smaller: Δlog 10 M / L g ∝(− 0.39 ± 0.02) z . This is consistent with an apparent formation redshift of for the underlying population, ignoring the effects of progenitor bias. A more complete spectroscopic sample is required at z ∼ 2 to properly measure the M / L evolution from the FP evolution.