KYDISC program: The Impact of Mergers on the Evolution of Galaxies

  • Published : 2017.04.10

Abstract

In the hope to detect low-surface brightness features (${\mu}_{r^{\prime}}{\sim}27\;mag\;arcsec^{-2}$), we carried out KASI-Yonsei Deep Imaging Survey for Clusters (KYDISC) targeting 14 local clusters at 0.016 < z < 0.145 using Magellan/IMACS telescope and CFHT/MegaCam. Out of 1450 cluster galaxies, 18% of galaxies show the signatures of galaxy mergers. We explore merger-driven changes from various point-of-view. We first examine color-magnitude relations, and find that galaxies related to recent mergers are populated more on blue color than their counterparts. Besides, we find the extremely low frequency of mergers on low-mass red-sequence galaxies, suggesting a migration of red galaxies into the green-valley region through merger-driven star-formation. We also study the mass-size relation of our sample, finding a larger galaxy size in galaxies related to recent mergers. Our results suggest that mergers can simultaneously change properties of galaxies, making outliers on galactic scaling relations.

Keywords