TY  - GEN
N2  - I present a study into the stellar mass assembly and size growth of low redshift, massive, central galaxies using a three-stage process. Stage one investigates the stellar mass assembly times of ~ 90,000 galaxies from the SDSS. Stellar mass is the main driver of assembly, with secondary dependencies on environment. A comparison to simulations shows that despite reproducing isolated trends, simulations struggle to reproduce secondary trends. Stage two investigates the nature of low surface brightness (LSB) features around a sub-sample (236) of these galaxies using deep, multi-band imaging from Subaru-HSC. High levels of interaction features are found from minor mergers, imprinted on stellar mass profiles. The LSB material properties such as stellar mass and colours are similar to SDSS satellites. This provides the first direct observational evidence of minor mergers driving the size evolution of galaxies. Stage three uses stellar population fitting of IFU data for a further sub-sample (15) of these galaxies. Subtle differences in age and metallicity profiles in galaxies of different interaction classes are found, however no difference in fractions of ex-situ stars are found. Differences in the stellar populations of galaxies are found to be preferentially linked to the assembly histories, not interaction morphologies.
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/30288/
A1  - Jackson, Thomas Matthew
ID  - heidok30288
TI  - The Assembly and Size Evolutionary Processes of Low Redshift, Massive, Central Galaxies
Y1  - 2021///
AV  - public
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  -