Minor Mergers or Progenitor Bias? The Stellar Ages of Small and Large Quenched Early-Type Galaxies

TL;DR

This study analyzes the stellar ages of quenched early-type galaxies to determine whether size evolution is driven by minor mergers or progenitor bias, using spectroscopic data from the zCOSMOS survey.

Contribution

It provides evidence that progenitor bias dominates size evolution below 10^11 solar masses, while dry mergers are significant above this mass, based on stellar age and abundance ratio analyses.

Findings

Younger stellar populations in large galaxies below 10^11 MSun support progenitor bias.

No age trend with size in galaxies above 10^11 MSun suggests dry mergers drive size growth.

Consistently high [alpha/Fe] ratios imply short formation timescales across the galaxy population.

Abstract

We investigate the origin of the evolution of the population-averaged size of quenched galaxies (QGs) through a spectroscopic analysis of their stellar ages. The two most favoured scenarios for this evolution are either the size growth of individual galaxies through a sequence of dry minor merger events, or the addition of larger, newly quenched galaxies to the pre-existing population (i.e., a progenitor bias effect). We use the 20k zCOSMOS-bright spectroscopic survey to select bona fide quiescent galaxies at 0.2<z<0.8. We stack their spectra in bins of redshift, stellar mass and size to compute stellar population parameters in these bins through fits to the rest-frame optical spectra and through Lick spectral indices. We confirm a change of behaviour in the size-age relation below and above the ~10^11 MSun stellar mass scale: In our 10.5 < log M*/MSun < 11 mass bin, over the entire redshift window, the stellar populations of the largest galaxies are systematically younger than those of the smaller counterparts, pointing at progenitor bias as the main driver of the observed average size evolution at sub-10^11 MSun masses. In contrast, at higher masses, there is no clear trend in age as a function of galaxy size, supporting a substantial role of dry mergers in increasing the sizes of these most massive QGs with cosmic time. Within the errors, the [alpha/Fe] abundance ratios of QGs are (i) above-solar over the entire redshift range of our analysis, hinting at universally short timescales for the buildup of the stellar populations of QGs, and (ii) similar at all masses and sizes, suggesting similar (short) timescales for the whole QG population and strengthening the role of mergers in the buildup of the most massive QGs in the Universe.