Hubble Space Telescope Survey of the Perseus Cluster: II. Photometric scaling relations in different environments

TL;DR

This study examines how photometric scaling relations of early-type galaxies vary across different environments, revealing that these relations are largely environment-independent but show significant slope changes at certain magnitudes, indicating different evolutionary processes.

Contribution

The paper provides new HST/ACS imaging data and demonstrates that photometric scaling relations are mostly environment-independent, with notable slope changes at M_V ~ -14 mag highlighting different galaxy evolution mechanisms.

Findings

Scaling relations are nearly environment-independent.

Significant slope change at M_V ~ -14 mag.

Different physical processes dominate galaxy evolution in different mass regimes.

Abstract

We investigate the global photometric scaling relations traced by early-type galaxies in different environments, ranging from dwarf spheroidals, over dwarf elliptical galaxies, up to giant ellipticals (-8 mag > M_V > -24 mag). These results are based in part on our new HST/ACS F555W and F814W imagery of dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Perseus Cluster. These scaling relations are almost independent of environment, with Local Group and cluster galaxies coinciding in the various diagrams. We show that at M_V ~ -14 mag, the slopes of the photometric scaling relations involving the Sersic parameters change significantly. We argue that these changes in slope reflect the different physical processes that dominate the evolution of early-type galaxies in different mass regimes. As such, these scaling relations contain a wealth of information that can be used to test models for the formation of early-type galaxies.