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Title: Red nuggets grow inside-out: evidence from gravitational lensing

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9]
  1. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy
  2. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  3. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  4. Univ. of Auckland (New Zealand). Dept. of Statistics
  5. Univ. of Groningen (The Netherlands). Kapteyn Astronomical Inst.
  6. Univ. de Lyon, Saint-Genis-Laval (France). Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon
  7. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  8. ASTRON, Netherlands Inst. for Radio Astronomy, Dwingeloo (The Netherlands); Kapteyn Astronomical Inst., Groningen (The Netherlands)
  9. Max Planck Society, Garching (Germany). Max Planck Inst. for Astrophysik
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here, we present a new sample of strong gravitational lens systems where both the foreground lenses and background sources are early-type galaxies. Using imaging from Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Advanced Camera for Studies (ACS) and Keck/NIRC2, we model the surface brightness distributions and show that the sources form a distinct population of massive, compact galaxies at redshifts 0.4 ≲ z ≲ 0.7, lying systematically below the size–mass relation of the global elliptical galaxy population at those redshifts. These may therefore represent relics of high-redshift red nuggets or their partly evolved descendants. We exploit the magnifying effect of lensing to investigate the structural properties, stellar masses and stellar populations of these objects with a view to understanding their evolution. We model these objects parametrically and find that they generally require two Sérsic components to properly describe their light profiles, with one more spheroidal component alongside a more envelope-like component, which is slightly more extended though still compact. This is consistent with the hypothesis of the inside-out growth of these objects via minor mergers. Lastly, we also find that the sources can be characterized by red-to-blue colour gradients as a function of radius which are stronger at low redshift – indicative of ongoing accretion – but that their environments generally appear consistent with that of the general elliptical galaxy population, contrary to recent suggestions that these objects are pre-dominantly associated with clusters.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515; NAS 5-26555
OSTI ID:
1353201
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 465, Issue 3; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 30 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (10)

Cosmological Distance Indicators journal July 2018
On the determination of transportation, range and distribution characteristics of Uranium-238, Thorium-232 and Potassium-40: a critical review journal December 2019
Bright compact bulges at intermediate redshifts journal May 2018
AutoLens: automated modeling of a strong lens’s light, mass, and source journal May 2018
SHARP – V. Modelling gravitationally lensed radio arcs imaged with global VLBI observations journal May 2018
A gravitationally lensed quasar discovered in OGLE journal February 2018
Resolving Quiescent Galaxies at z ≳ 2. I. Search for Gravitationally Lensed Sources and Characterization of Their Structure, Stellar Populations, and Line Emission journal July 2018
A Gravitationally Lensed Quasar Discovered in OGLE text January 2018
Resolving Quiescent Galaxies at $z \gtrsim 2$: I. Search for Gravitationally Lensed Sources and Characterization of their Structure, Stellar Populations, and Line Emission text January 2018
SHARP - V. Modelling gravitationally-lensed radio arcs imaged with global VLBI observations text January 2018

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79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
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