A Multiwavelength Study of a Sample of 70 μm Selected Galaxies in the COSMOS Field: II. The Role of Mergers in Galaxy Evolution

We analyze the morphological properties of a large sample of 1503 70 micron selected galaxies in the COSMOS field spanning the redshift range 0.011 being difficult to classify and subject to the effects of band pass shifting, therefore, these numbers can only be considered lower limits. At z1 the fraction of major mergers is at least 30-40% for ULIRGs. Although the general morphological trends agree with what has been observed for local (U)LIRGs, the fraction of major mergers is slightly lower than seen locally. This is in part due to the difficulty of identifying merger signatures at high redshift. We argue that given the number of major gas-rich mergers observed and the relatively short timescale that they would be observable in the (U)LIRG phase that it is plausible for the observed red sequence of massive ellipticals (
Comment: 30 pages, 27 figures, and 6 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ. The full resolution version can be found at: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~jeyhan/paperII/Kartaltepe_70mic_PaperII.pdf