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The role of galaxy merging in the life of massive galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2016

Allison W. S. Man
Allison W. S. Man*
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory (Garching) email: allison.man@eso.org
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Abstract

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The role of galaxy mergers in the evolution of massive galaxies remains debated. While deep near-infrared surveys have enabled several independent merger rate measurements out to z~3, they are limited to small samples and results are discrepant at z=2–3. In Man et al., we use the UltraVISTA and CANDELS surveys to obtain the largest sample of photometric galaxy pairs at z>1 for measuring the galaxy merger fraction and rate of massive galaxies. We find that the discrepancy of previous studies is due to selection effect. Defining galaxy pairs by stellar mass ratio leads to a flat z-evolution of the merger fraction, while defining by flux ratio leads to an increasing trend. The implications on the evolution of massive galaxies are summarized here.

Keywords

galaxies: evolutiongalaxies: high-redshiftgalaxies: interactionsgalaxies: statistics
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 11 , General Assembly A29B: Astronomy in Focus , August 2015 , pp. 306 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

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