We use the Mitchell Spectrograph (formerly VIRUS-P) on the McDonald Observatory 2.7m Harlan J. Smith Telescope to search for the chemical signatures of massive elliptical galaxy assembly. The Mitchell Spectrograph is an integral-field spectrograph with a uniquely wide field of view (107x107 sq arcsec), allowing us to achieve remarkably high signal-to-noise ratios of ~20-70 per pixel in radial bins of 2-2.5 times the effective radii of the eight galaxies in our sample. Focusing on a sample of massive elliptical galaxies with stellar velocity dispersions sigma* > 150 km/s, we study the radial dependence in the equivalent widths (EWs) of key metal absorption lines. By twice the effective radius, the Mgb EWs have dropped by ~50%, and only a weak correlation between sigma* and Mgb EW remains. The Mgb EWs at large radii are comparable to those seen in the centers of elliptical galaxies that are approximately an order of magnitude less massive. We find that the well-known metallicity gradients often observed within an effective radius continue smoothly to 2.5R_e, while the abundance ratio gradients remain flat. Much like the halo of the Milky Way, the stellar halos of our galaxies have low metallicities and high alpha-abundance ratios, as expected for very old stars formed in small stellar systems. Our observations support a picture in which the outer parts of massive elliptical galaxies are built by the accretion of much smaller systems whose star formation history was truncated at early times.
We use deep surface photometry of the giant elliptical M49 (NGC 4472), obtained as part of our survey for diffuse light in the Virgo Cluster, to study the stellar populations in its outer halo. Our data trace M49's stellar halo out to ~ 100 kpc (7 Re), where we find that the shallow color gradient seen in the inner regions becomes dramatically steeper. The outer regions of the galaxy are quite blue (B-V ~ 0.7); if this is purely a metallicity effect, it argues for extremely metal poor stellar populations with [Fe/H] < -1. We also find that the extended accretion shells around M49 are distinctl…
Elliptical galaxies have hot coronae with X-ray luminosities and mean gas temperatures that span over wide ranges. This variation can be partially due to the energy budget of the hot gas, that depends on the host galaxy structure and internal kinematics. With the aid of realistic axisymmetric galaxy models, we performed a diagnostic study focussed on the effects of galaxy flattening and rotational support on the hot gas temperature.
We present the first deep survey of resolved stellar populations in the remote outer halo of our nearest giant elliptical (gE), Centaurus A (D=3.8 Mpc). Using the VIMOS/VLT optical camera, we obtained deep photometry for four fields along the major and minor axes at projected elliptical radii of ~30-85 kpc (corresponding to ~5-14 R_{eff}). We use resolved star counts to map the spatial and colour distribution of red giant branch (RGB) stars down to ~2 magnitudes below the RGB tip. We detect an extended halo out to the furthermost elliptical radius probed (~85 kpc or ~14 R_{eff}), demonstrating…
We investigate the distribution of the luminous and the dark matter components in the isolated ellipticals NGC 7052 and NGC 7785, embedded in an emitting hot gas halo, by means of relevant X-ray and photometric data. In order to calculate the dark matter distribution in these rare objects, we performed an improved X-ray analysis of the XMM-Newton data of NGC 7785, and we used former results based on Chandra data of NGC 7052. For each object we also derived the stellar spheroid length scale from the surface photometry and the spheroid stellar mass from an analysis of the galaxy spectral energy …
As part of our current programme to test LCDM predictions for dark matter (DM) haloes using extended kinematical observations of early-type galaxies, we present a dynamical analysis of the bright elliptical galaxy NGC 4374 (M84) based on ~450 Planetary Nebulae (PNe) velocities from the PN.Spectrograph, along with extended long-slit stellar kinematics. This is the first such analysis of a galaxy from our survey with a radially constant velocity dispersion profile. We find that the spatial and kinematical distributions of the PNe agree with the field stars in the region of overlap. The velocity …
This article describes the Schwarzschild orbit superposition method. It is the state-of-the-art dynamical modelling tool for early-type galaxies. Tests with analytic models show that masses and orbital anisotropies of not too face-on galaxies can be recovered with about 15 percent accuracy from typical observational data. Applying Schwarzschild models to a sample of Coma galaxies their dark matter halos were found to be 13 times denser than those of spirals with the same stellar mass. Since denser halos assembled earlier, this result indicates that the formation redshift 1+z of ellipticals is …
We present an analysis of the spatial and chemical sub-structures in a remote halo field in the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (NGC~5128), situated at about 38 kpc from the centre of the galaxy. The observations were taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope, and reach down to the horizontal branch. In this relatively small 3.8 kpc by 3.8 kpc field, after correcting for Poisson noise, we do not find any statistically strong evidence for the presence of small-scale sub-structures in the stellar spatial distribution on scales greater th…
Strong gravitational lensing by groups or clusters of galaxies provides a powerful technique to measure the dark matter properties of individual lens galaxies. We study in detail the mass distribution of the satellite lens galaxy in the group-scale lens SL2S J08544-0121 by modelling simultaneously the spatially extended surface brightness distribution of the source galaxy and the lens mass distribution using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In particular, we measure the dark matter halo size of the satellite lens galaxy to be 6.0^{+2.9}_{-2.0} kpc with a fiducial velocity dispersion of 127^{+…
We use deep V-band surface photometry of five of the brightest elliptical galaxies in the Virgo cluster to search for diffuse tidal streams, shells, and plumes in their outer halos (r > 50 kpc). We fit and subtract elliptical isophotal models from the galaxy images to reveal a variety of substructure, with surface brightnesses in the range mu_V= 26-29 mag/arcsec^2. M49 possesses an extended, interleaved shell system reminiscent of the radial accretion of a satellite companion, while M89's complex system of shells and plumes suggests a more complicated accretion history involving either multipl…
Recent progress is summarized on the determination of the density distributions of stars and dark matter, stellar kinematics, and stellar population properties, in the extended, low surface brightness halo regions of elliptical galaxies. With integral field absorption spectroscopy and with planetary nebulae as tracers, velocity dispersion and rotation profiles have been followed to ~4 and ~5-8 effective radii, respectively, and in M87 to the outer edge at ~150 kpc. The results are generally consistent with the known dichotomy of elliptical galaxy types, but some galaxies show more complex rota…
We present high quality long slit spectra along the major and minor axes out to 1.5-2 Re (14-22 kpc) of three bright elliptical galaxies (NGC1600, NGC4125, NGC7619) obtained at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). We derive stellar kinematic profiles and Lick/IDS indices (Hbeta, Mgb, Fe5015, Fe5270, Fe5335, Fe5406). Moreover, for NGC4125 we derive gas kinematics and emission line strengths. We model the absorption line strengths using Simple Stellar Populations models that take into account the variation of [α/Fe] and derive ages, total metallicity and element abundances. Overall, we find that th…
We present an analysis of the z ~ 0 morphology-environment relation for 911 bright (M_B < -19) galaxies, matching classical RC3 morphologies to the SDSS-based group catalog of Yang et al. We study how the relative fractions of spirals, lenticulars, and ellipticals depend on halo mass over a range of 10^11.7-10^14.8 h^-1 Msol. We pay particular attention to how morphology relates to central (most massive) vs satellite galaxy status. The fraction of galaxies which are elliptical is a strong function of stellar mass; it is also a strong function of halo mass, but only for central galaxies. We int…
Two incorrect arguments against MOND in elliptical galaxies could be that the equivalent circular velocity curves tend to become flat at much larger accelerations than in spiral galaxies, and that the Newtonian dark matter halos are more concentrated than in spirals. Here, we compare published scaling relations for the dark halos of elliptical galaxies to the scaling relations expected for MONDian phantom halos. We represent the baryonic content of galaxies by spherical profiles, and their corresponding MONDian phantom halos by logarithmic halos. We then derive the surface densities, central d…
An analytic galaxy model with $ρ\sim r^{-1}$ at small radii and $ρ\sim r^{-3.5}$ at large radii is presented. The asymptotic density fall-off is slower than the Hernquist model, but faster than the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile for dark matter haloes, and so in accord with recent evidence from cosmological simulations. The model provides the zeroth-order term in a biorthornomal basis function expansion, meaning that axisymmetric, triaxial and lopsided distortions can easily be added (much like the Hernquist model itself which is the zeroth-order term of the Hernquist-Ostriker expansion). T…
We derive the average mass profile of elliptical galaxies from the ensemble of 161 strong gravitational lens systems selected from several surveys, assuming that the mass profile scales with the stellar mass and effective radius of each lensing galaxy. The total mass profile is well fitted by a power-law ρ(r) \propto r^γwith best-fit slope γ= -2.11+/-0.05. The decomposition of the total mass profile into stellar and dark matter distributions is difficult due to a fundamental degeneracy between the stellar initial mass function (IMF) and the dark matter fraction f_DM. We demonstrate that this I…
We use cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations with the SPH code gasoline of four haloes of mass M_{200} \sim 10^{13}\Msun to study the response of the dark matter to elliptical galaxy formation. Our simulations include metallicity dependent gas cooling, star formation, and feedback from massive stars and supernovae, but not active galactic nuclei (AGN). At z=2 the progenitor galaxies have stellar to halo mass ratios consistent with halo abundance matching, assuming a Salpeter initial mass function. However by z=0 the standard runs suffer from the well known overcooling problem, overpr…
As part of the SPLASH survey of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and its neighbors, we have obtained Keck/DEIMOS spectra of the compact elliptical (cE) satellite M32. This is the first resolved-star kinematical study of any cE galaxy. In contrast to previous studies that extended out to r<30"~1Re~100pc, we measure the rotation curve and velocity dispersion profile out to r~250" and higher order Gauss-Hermite moments out to r~70". We achieve this by combining integrated-light spectroscopy at small radii (where crowding/blending are severe) with resolved stellar spectroscopy at larger radii, using spa…
We create dynamical models of the massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 4649, using the N-body made-to-measure code, NMAGIC, and kinematic constraints from long-slit and planetary nebula (PN) data. We explore a range of potentials based on previous determinations from X-ray observations and a dynamical model fitting globular cluster (GC) velocities and a stellar density profile. The X-ray mass distributions are similar in the central region but have varying outer slopes, while the GC mass profile is higher in the central region and on the upper end of the range further out. Our models cannot differen…
We study the stellar populations of 1,923 elliptical galaxies at z<0.05 selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as a function of velocity dispersion, sigma, and environment. We construct average, high signal-to-noise spectra and find the following: (1) lower-sigma galaxies have a bluer optical continuum and stronger (but still weak) emission lines; (2) at fixed sigma, field ellipticals have a slightly bluer stellar continuum, especially at wavelengths \lesssim 4000 Å, and have stronger (but still weak) emission lines compared to their group counterparts, although this environmental dependen…
We present dynamical models of NGC 4494, which we built using our iterative method presented in a previous paper. These models are live N-body models consisting of equal mass particles, and they are steady state as confirmed by a fully self-consistent evolution. Our goals were twofold. The first one -- namely to test whether our iterative method could indeed be used to construct galactic models following given observational constraints, both photometric and kinematic -- was fully achieved. Our method allowed us to go beyond a simple spherical model and to make full sets of rotating, axisymmetr…
We study the radial dependence in stellar populations of 33 nearby early-type galaxies with central stellar velocity dispersions sigma* > 150 km/s. We measure stellar population properties in composite spectra, and use ratios of these composites to highlight the largest spectral changes as a function of radius. Based on stellar population modeling, the typical star at 2 R_e is old (~10 Gyr), relatively metal poor ([Fe/H] -0.5), and alpha-enhanced ([Mg/Fe]~0.3). The stars were made rapidly at z~1.5-2 in shallow potential wells. Declining radial gradients in [C/Fe], which follow [Fe/H], also ari…
We present the first large-scale stellar kinematic and line-strength maps for dwarf elliptical galaxies (9 in the Virgo Cluster and 3 in the field environment) obtained with the SAURON integral-field unit. No two galaxies in our sample are alike: we see that the level of rotation is not tied to flattening (we have, e.g. round rotators and flattened nonrotators); we observe kinematic twists in 1 Virgo and 1 field object; we discover large-scale kinematically-decoupled components in 2 field galaxies; we see varying gradients in line-strength maps, from nearly flat to strongly peaked in the cente…
We present an analysis of the neutral hydrogen and stellar populations of elliptical galaxies in the Tal et al. (2009) sample. Our aim is to test their conclusion that the continuing assembly of these galaxies at z~0 is essentially gas-free and not accompanied by significant star formation. In order to do so, we make use of HI data and line-strength indices available in the literature. We look for direct and indirect evidence of the presence of cold gas during the recent assembly of these objects and analyse its relation to galaxy morphological fine structure. We find that >25% of ellipticals …
I present some results of 3D spectroscopy for a small sample of dwarf elliptical galaxies, mostly members of small groups. The galaxies under consideration have a typical absolute magnitude of -18 (B-band), and at the Kormendy's relation they settle within a transition zone between the main cloud of giant ellipticals and the sequence of diffuse ellipticals. By measuring Lick indices and investigating radial profiles of the SSP-equivalent ages and metallicities of the stellar populations in their central parts, I have found evolutionary distinct cores in all of them. Typically, the ages of thes…
Recent studies have shown that massive elliptical galaxies have total mass density profiles within an effective radius that can be approximated as ρ_{tot}\propto r^{-γ'}, with mean slope <γ'>=2.08 \pm 0.03 and scatter σ_γ'=0.16 \pm 0.02. The small scatter of the slope (known as the bulge-halo conspiracy) is not generic in LCDM based models and therefore contains information about the galaxy formation process. We compute the distribution of γ' for LCDM-based models that reproduce the observed correlations between stellar mass, velocity dispersion, and effective radius of early-type galaxies in …
For a sample of 9 well-studied giant ellipticals we compare the projected radial distribution of their red and blue globular cluster (GC) subpopulations with their host galaxy stellar and X-ray surface brightness profiles. We support previous findings that the surface density distribution of red (metal-rich) GCs follows that of the host galaxy starlight. We find good agreement between the outer slope of the blue GC surface density and that of the galaxy X-ray emission. This coincidence of projected radial profiles is likely due to the fact that both blue GCs and X-ray emitting hot gas share th…
Surface photometry of 311 ellipticals from the 2MASS imaging database is analyzed with respect to the two most common fitting functions; the r^1/4 law and the Sersic r^1/n model. The advantages and disadvantages of each fitting function are examined. In particular, the r^1/4 law performs well in the middle regions, but is inadequate for the core (inner 5 kpcs) and the outer regions (beyond the half-light radius) which do not have r^1/4 shapes. It is found that the Sersic r^1/n model produce good fits to the core regions of ellipticals (r < r_half), but is an inadequate function for the entire …
We compare the stellar population properties in the central regions of visually classified non-starforming spiral and elliptical galaxies from Galaxy Zoo and SDSS DR7. The galaxies lie in the redshift range $0.04<z<0.1$ and have stellar masses larger than $logM_*=10.4$. We select only face-on spiral galaxies in order to avoid contamination by light from the disk in the SDSS fiber and enabling the robust visual identification of spiral structure. Overall, we find that galaxies with larger central stellar velocity dispersions, regardless of morphological type, have older ages, higher metalliciti…
We provide a family of action-based distribution functions (DFs) for the double-power law family of densities often used to model galaxies. The DF itself is a double-power law in combinations of the actions, and reduces to the known limits in the case of a pure power-law at small and large radii. Our method enables the velocity anisotropy of the model to be tuned, and so the anisotropy in the inner and outer parts can be specified for the application in hand. We provide self-consistent DFs for the Hernquist and Jaffe models - both with everywhere isotropic velocity dispersions, and with kinema…
Hubble Space Telescope studies of the resolved stellar population of elliptical galaxies have shown that the galaxies form by steady accretion of gas which is all the while forming stars and evolving chemically to a metallicity distribution that is as high as solar composition in the most massive objects that have been analyzed, and much lower for low mass ellipticals. In this paper we study for the first time the stellar content of an early type spiral galaxy, the massive disk galaxy, the Sombrero, NGC 4594. We consider whether the metallicity distribution function (MDF) in the observed field…
The dark matter (DM) halos of field elliptical galaxies have not been well studied and their properties appear controversial. While some galaxies appear to be nearly devoid of DM, others show clear evidence of its presence. Furthermore, modified Netonian dynamics (MOND), which has been found to have predictive power in the domain of disk galaxies, has not yet been investigated for isolated elliptical galaxies. We study the kinematics of the isolated elliptical NGC 7507, which has been claimed as a clear example of DM presence in early-type galaxies. We obtained major and minor axis long-slit s…
A Salpeter IMF and an NFW halo: Disentangling the dark and stellar mass of an elliptical galaxy through precise lens modelling of a double-source-plane system
University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学）；The University of Sydney（悉尼大学）
The formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies (EGs) is still an open question. In particular, recent observations suggest that elliptical galaxies are not only simple spheroidal systems of old stars. In this paper we analyze a sample of elliptical galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in order to study the star-forming activity in local elliptical galaxies. Among these 487 ellipticals we find that 13 EGs show unambiguous evidence of recent star-formation activity betrayed by conspicuous nebular emission lines. Using the evolutionary stellar population synthesis models and Li…
We revisit the scaling relations and star-forming histories of local elliptical galaxies using a novel selection method applied to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7. We combine two probability-based automated spectroscopic and morphological classifications of about 600000 galaxies with z<0.25 to isolate true elliptical galaxies. Our sample selection method does not introduce artificial cuts in the parameters describing the galaxy but instead it associates to every object a weight measuring the probability of being in a given spectro-morphological class. Thus the sample minimizes the selection b…
We present simulations of dry-merger encounters between pairs of elliptical galaxies with dark matter halos. The aim of these simulations is to study the intergalactic stellar populations produced in both parabolic and hyperbolic encounters. We model progenitor galaxies with total-to-luminous mass ratios M_T/M_L 3 and 11. The initial mass of the colliding galaxies are chosen so that M_1/M_2 and 10. The model galaxies are populated by particles representing stars, as in Stanghellini et al. (2006), and dark matter. Merger remnants resulting from these encounters display a population of unbounded…
Dynamical modeling and strong lensing data indicate that the total density profiles of early-type galaxies are close to isothermal, i.e., rho_tot ~ r^gamma with gamma approx -2. To understand the origin of this universal slope we study a set of simulated spheroids formed in isolated binary mergers as well as the formation within the cosmological framework. The total stellar plus dark matter density profiles can always be described by a power law with an index of gamma approx -2.1 with a tendency toward steeper slopes for more compact, lower-mass ellipticals. In the binary mergers the amount of…
NGC 4494 is one of several intermediate-luminosity elliptical galaxies inferred to have an unusually diffuse dark matter halo. We use the chi^2-made-to-measure particle code NMAGIC to construct axisymmetric models of NGC 4494 from photometric and various kinematic data. The extended kinematics include light spectra in multiple slitlets out to 3.5 R_e, and hundreds of planetary nebulae velocities out to ~7 R_e, thus allowing us to probe the dark matter content and orbital structure in the halo. We use Monte Carlo simulations to estimate confidence boundaries for the halo parameters, given our d…
The origin of equilibrium gravitational configurations is sought in terms of the stability of their trajectories, as described by the curvature of their Lagrangian configuration manifold of particle positions --- a context in which subtle spurious effects originating from the singularity in the two body potential become particularly clear. We focus on the case of spherical systems, which support only regular orbits in the collisionless limit, despite the persistence of local exponential instability of $N$-body trajectories in the anomalous case of discrete point particle representation even as…
The kinematics of stars and planetary nebulae in early type galaxies provide vital clues to the enigmatic physics of their dark matter halos. We fit published data for fourteen such galaxies using a spherical, self-gravitating model with two components: (1) a Sersic stellar profile fixed according to photometric parameters, and (2) a polytropic dark matter halo that conforms consistently to the shared gravitational potential. The polytropic equation of state can describe extended theories of dark matter involving self-interaction, non-extensive thermostatistics, or boson condensation (in a cla…
The dense cores of X-ray emitting gaseous halos of large elliptical galaxies with temperatures below about 0.8 keV show two prominent Fe XVII emission features, which provide a sensitive diagnostic tool to measure the effects of resonant scattering. We present here high-resolution spectra of five bright nearby elliptical galaxies, obtained with the Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) on the XMM-Newton satellite. The spectra for the cores of four of the galaxies show the Fe XVII line at 15.01 Angstrom being suppressed by resonant scattering. The data for NGC 4636 in particular allow the effe…
We investigate the origin of a bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function (IMF) recently observed in elliptical galaxies by using chemical evolution models with a non-universal IMF. We adopt the Kroupa IMF with the three slopes (alpha_1, alpha_2, and alpha_3) dependent on metallicities ([Fe/H]) and densities (rho_g) of star-forming gas clouds and thereby search for the best IMF model that can reproduce (i) the observed steep IMF slope (alpha_2 ~ 3, i.e., bottom-heavy) for low stellar masses (m < 1 M_sun) and (ii) the correlation of alpha_2 with chemical properties of elliptical galaxies in a s…
The combination of strong gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics provides a powerful and robust method to investigate the mass and dynamical structure of early-type galaxies. We demonstrate this approach by analysing two massive ellipticals from the XLENS Survey for which both high-resolution HST imaging and X-Shooter spectroscopic observations are available. We adopt a flexible axisymmetric two-component mass model for the lens galaxies, consisting of a generalised NFW dark halo and a realistic self-gravitating stellar mass distribution. For both systems, we put constraints on the dark …
Several proposed models for dark matter posit the existence of self-interaction processes that can impact the shape of dark matter halos, making them more spherical than the ellipsoidal halos of collisionless dark matter. One method of probing the halo shapes, and thus the strength of the dark matter self-interaction, is by measuring the shape of the X-ray gas that traces the gravitational potential in relaxed elliptical galaxies. In this work we identify a sample of 11 relaxed, isolated elliptical galaxies and measure the ellipticity of the gravitating matter using X-ray images from the XMM-N…
Several recent studies have provided evidence for a `bottom-heavy' stellar initial mass function (IMF) in massive elliptical galaxies. Here we investigate the influence of the IMF shape on the recently discovered color-magnitude relation (CMR) among globular clusters (GCs) in such galaxies. To this end we use calculations of GC mass loss due to stellar and dynamical evolution to evaluate (i) the shapes of stellar mass functions in GCs after 12 Gyr of evolution as a function of current GC mass along with their effects on integrated-light colors and mass-to-light ratios, and (ii) their impact on…
