Major Merging History in CANDELS. I. Evolution of the Incidence of Massive Galaxy-Galaxy Pairs from z=3 to z~0

• Published in: arXiv.org 2017-12
• Main Authors: Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha, McIntosh, Daniel H, Brennan, Ryan, Ferguson, Henry C, Kodra, Dritan, Newman, Jeffrey A, Rafelski, Marc, Somerville, Rachel S, Conselice, Christopher J, Cook, Joshua S, Hathi, Nimish P, Koo, David C, Lotz, Jennifer M, Simmons, Brooke D, Straughn, Amber N, Synder, Gregory F, Wuyts, Stijn, Bell, Eric F, Dekel, Avishai, Kartaltepe, Jeyhan, Kocevski, Dale D, Koekemoer, Anton M, Seong-Kook, Lee, Lucas, Ray A, Pacifici, Camilla, Peth, Michael A, Barro, Guillermo, Dahlen, Tomas, Finkelstein, Steven L, Fontana, Adriano, Galametz, Audrey, Grogin, Norman A, Guo, Yicheng, Mobasher, Bahram, Nayyeri, Hooshang, Perez-Gonzalez, Pablo G, Pforr, Janine, Santini, Paola, Stefanon, Mauro, Wiklind, Tommy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Criteria; Empirical analysis; Galactic evolution; Galaxies; Galaxy mergers & collisions; Incidence; Predictions; Red shift; Stars & galaxies; Stellar mass
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1712.06611

The rate of major galaxy-galaxy merging is theoretically predicted to steadily increase with redshift during the peak epoch of massive galaxy development (\(1{\leq}z{\leq}3\)). We use close-pair statistics to objectively study the incidence of massive galaxies (stellar \(M_{1}{\geq}2{\times}10^{10}M_{\odot}\)) hosting major companions (\(1{\leq}M_{1}/M_{2}{\leq}4\); i.e., \(}1.5\). Instead, if we use an evolving \(T_{\mathrm{obs,pair}}(z){\propto}(1+z)^{-2}\) from Snyder et al., our MR-based rates agree with theory at \(0{