Effect of Environment on the Underlying Stellar Populations of Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies in the Coma Cluster

We derive ages, metallicities and [alpha/Fe] ratios for dwarf early-type galaxies (dE/dS0) in the center and a region believed to be infalling into the Coma cluster. We find that a set of metallic indices cannot be described by linear relations with velocity dispersion (sigma), while another group o...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Matkovic, A., Guzmán, R., Sánchez Blázquez, Patricia, Cardiel López, Nicolás, Gorgas García, Francisco Javier
Format: article
Publication Date:2009
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/51296
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/51296
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:52
Indexes
Matter
Astrofísica
Astronomía (Física)
Física atmosférica
2501 Ciencias de la Atmósfera
Description
Summary:We derive ages, metallicities and [alpha/Fe] ratios for dwarf early-type galaxies (dE/dS0) in the center and a region believed to be infalling into the Coma cluster. We find that a set of metallic indices cannot be described by linear relations with velocity dispersion (sigma), while another group of indices exhibits linear index-sigma relations. dE/dS0 galaxies in the core of the cluster are on average younger, and have lower metallicities and lower alpha-ratios (solar to sub-solar) than the more luminous elliptical galaxies. On the other hand, dEs/dSos in the infall region of Coma form a less homogeneous population. We find an unusually high fraction of dE/dS0s with high [alpha/Fe] ratios, suggesting short time scales for the star formation histories for these galaxies. Furthermore, the dE/dS0s with high alpha-ratios have a range of ages and metallicities implying multiple formation scenarios where some galaxies have experienced their short star formation bursts at more recent epochs.