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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(525), p. 31-46, 1999

DOI: 10.1086/307885

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[ITAL]Hubble Space Telescope[/ITAL] Imaging of the CFRS and LDSS Redshift Surveys. III. Field Elliptical Galaxies at [FORMULA][F]0.2

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Postprint: archiving forbidden
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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Two-dimensional surface photometry has been performed on a magnitude-limited sample of 46 field galaxies that are classified as ellipticals based on two-dimensional fitting of their luminosity profiles using Hubble Space Telescope imaging. These galaxies are described well by a de Vaucouleurs R1/4 profile. The sample was selected from the combined Canada-France and LDSS redshift surveys and spans the redshift range 0.20 < z < 1.00. This analysis reveals several clear evolutionary trends. First, the relationship between galaxy half-light radius and luminosity evolves with redshift such that a galaxy of a given size is more luminous by ΔMB = -0.97 ± 0.14 mag at z = 0.92 relative to the local cluster elliptical relation. Second, the mean rest-frame color shifts blueward with redshift by Δ(U-V) = -0.68 ± 0.11 at z = 0.92 relative to the same relation in the Coma Cluster. These shifts in color and luminosity of field elliptical galaxies are similar to those measured for cluster ellipticals. Approximately one-third of these elliptical galaxies (independent of redshift) exhibit [O II] 3727 emission lines with equivalent widths >15 Å, indicating ongoing star formation. Therefore, field elliptical galaxies are not composed entirely of very old stellar populations. Estimated star formation rates (SFR) together with stellar population evolutionary models imply that ≤5% of the stellar mass in the elliptical galaxy population has been formed since z = 1. We find some evidence that the dispersion in color among field ellipticals at z ~ 0.55 may be larger than that seen among samples of cluster ellipticals and S0 galaxies at similar redshift. We see no evidence for a decline in the space density of early-type galaxies with look-back time. Both the V/Vmax statistics and a comparison with local luminosity functions are consistent with the view that the population of massive early-type galaxies was largely in place by z ~ 1. This implies that merging is not required since that time to produce the present-day space density of elliptical galaxies. However, the statistics are poor: a larger sample is required to produce a decisive result.