201. The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) -- Environment-size relation of massive passive galaxies at 0.5 < z < 0.8
- Author
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Gargiulo, A., Cucciati, O., Garilli, B., Scodeggio, M., Bolzonella, M., Zamorani, G., De Lucia, G., Krywult, J., Guzzo, L., Granett, B. R., de la Torre, S., Abbas, U., Adami, C., Arnouts, S., Bottini, D., Cappi, A., Franzetti, P., Fritz, A., Haines, C., Hawken, A. J., Iovino, A., Brun, V. Le, Fèvre, O. Le, Maccagni, D., Małek, K., Marulli, F., Moutard, T., Polletta, M., Pollo, A., Tasca, L. A. M., Tojeiro, R., Vergani, D., Zanichelli, A., Bel, J., Branchini, E., Coupon, J., Ilbert, O., Moscardini, L., and Peacock, J. A.
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Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies - Abstract
We use the statistics of the VIPERS survey to investigate the relation between the surface mean stellar mass density Sigma=Mstar/(2*pi*Re^2) of massive passive galaxies (MPGs, Mstar>10^11 Msun) and their environment in the redshift range 0.5
2*10^11 Msun, we find an excess of MPGs with low Sigma and a deficit of high-Sigma MPGs in the densest regions wrt other environments. We interpret this result as due to the migration of some high-Sigma MPGs (<1% of the total population of MPGs) into low-Sigma MPGs, probably through mergers or cannibalism of small satellites. In summary, our results imply that the accretion of satellite galaxies has a marginal role in the mass-assembly history of most MPGs. We have previously found that the number density of VIPERS massive star-forming galaxies (MSFGs) declines rapidily from z=0.8 to z=0.5, which mirrors the rapid increase in the number density of MPGs. This indicates that the MSFGs at z>0.8 migrate to the MPG population. Here, we investigate the Sigma-delta relation of MSFGs at z>0.8 and find that it is consistent within 1 sigma with that of low-Sigma MPGs at z<0.8. Thus, the results of this and our previous paper show that MSFGs at z>0.8 are consistent in terms of number and environment with being the progenitors of low-Sigma MPGs at z<0.8., Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in A&A - Published
- 2019
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