Internal kinematics of dwarf early-type galaxies with blue-center in the Virgo Cluster from Gemini GMOS long-slit spectroscopy

  • Published : 2016.04.12

Abstract

Dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs), the most abundant galaxy type in clusters, were recently shown to exhibit a wide variety in their properties. Particularly, the presence of blue cores in some dEs, what we call dE(bc), supports the scenario of late-type galaxy infall and subsequent transformation into red, quiescent dEs. While several transformation mechanisms for these dE(bc)s within cluster environment have been proposed, all these processes are able to explain only some of the observational properties of dEs. In this context, internal kinematic properties of dE(bc)s provide the most crucial evidence to discriminate different processes for the formation of these galaxies. We present Gemini Multi Object Spectrograph (GMOS) long-slit spectroscopy of two dE(bc)s in the Virgo cluster. We obtained radial profiles of velocity and velocity dispersion out to ~1.3 effective radius. We found that two dE(bc)s exhibit kinematically decoupled components as well as distinct peculiar features in velocity profiles, supporting the scenario of mergers. We also found that these galaxies are structurally compatible with low surface brightness component of blue compact dwarf galaxies. We suggest that a part of dE(bc)s in the Virgo Cluster were formed through galaxy merger in low density environment such as galaxy group or outskirt of the cluster, and then were quenched by subsequent effects within cluster environment.

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