Stellar Populations on the V/sigma-ellipticity plane

Background

Stellar populations and stellar kinematic studies provide different, but complementary insights in how galaxies build-up their stellar mass and angular momentum. Age, Alpha-Enhancement, and metallicity, reveal when and on what timescale most stars were formed, and how the stellar population within a galaxy chemically evolved. However, stellar population studies alone cannot put strong constraints on when and how a galaxy's mass was assembled. For example, a massive galaxy that formed through late (major) dry mergers of two galaxies with similar chemical composition is nearly indistinguishable from a galaxy that assembled all its mass in the early universe. Stellar dynamics offers a different insight in a galaxy's mass assembly as mergers typically remove angular momentum and change the orbital distribution of stars. By combining stellar population and stellar dynamical tracers we can get a more detailed insight in where in galaxies stars are formed, and how the distribution of stars changes as a function of time.

SAMI Project

This project will combine the stellar populations measurements from Nic Scott et al. (2017) and the stellar kinematics measurements from Jesse van de Sande et al. (2017a,b). The main focus of the paper will be to look at how stellar population tracers vary within the V\Sigma-Ellipticity and V\Sigma-Mass diagrams.

Dependencies

  • Stellar population measurements (NS) Available
  • Stellar kinematic maps (JvdS). Available
  • V/sigma and LambdaR measurements (JvdS). Available

Resulting Data Products for the Team

  • All data products that this work is based on are already available on request (NS, JvdS).
Publication Date: 
October 2017