title: The Effect of Mergers on Galaxy Formation and Evolution
creator: Skelton, Rosalind Eugenie
subject: ddc-520
subject: 520 Astronomy and allied sciences
description: This thesis explores the effect of galaxy mergers on the evolution of galaxies over the last 8 billion years using the merger trees from a semi-analytic model (SAM) of galaxy formation. The SAM produces reasonable agreement with the distribution of mass, luminosity and colour at low redshifts, as well as the observed merger fractions. I revisit two apparent contradictions between the standard hierarchical model of galaxy formation and observations of early-type galaxies, using the galaxy merger trees as the basis for further modelling. The observed colour--magnitude relation from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has a change in slope and smaller scatter at the bright end. A simple toy model shows that dry mergers produce similar characteristics. Contrary to previous claims, the small scatter in the observed CMR thus cannot be used to constrain the amount of dry merging. I incorporate stellar population synthesis modelling into this framework to explore the evolution of early-type galaxies since z=1. There is strong evolution in colour and magnitude if no mergers occur after this time. Dry mergers and the recent addition of younger populations onto the red sequence reduce the evolution, mimicking that of an ancient passively-evolving population. Early-type galaxies can therefore appear to have evolved passively even though significant merging activity continues to recent times.
date: 2010
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10495/1/thesis_dblside_v4.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00010495
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-104956
identifier:   Skelton, Rosalind Eugenie  (2010) The Effect of Mergers on Galaxy Formation and Evolution.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10495/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng