# Investigating early-type galaxy evolution with a multiwavelength approach. II. The UV structure of 11 galaxies with Swift-UVOT

## TL;DR

This study uses multiwavelength UV and optical data to analyze the structure and recent star formation in 11 early-type galaxies, revealing UV-bright features like rings and arms indicative of ongoing evolutionary processes.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of UV and optical structures in early-type galaxies, highlighting the importance of dissipation and recent star formation in their evolution.

## Key findings

- UV features such as rings and arms are common in the sample.
- UV Sersic indices are generally lower than optical, indicating disk components.
- Color profiles show bluer regions in UV-bright structures.

## Abstract

GALEX detected a significant fraction of early-type galaxies showing Far-UV bright structures. These features suggest the occurrence of recent star formation episodes. We aim at understanding their evolutionary path[s] and the mechanisms at the origin of their UV-bright structures. We investigate with a multi-lambda approach 11 early-types selected because of their nearly passive stage of evolution in the nuclear region. The paper, second of a series, focuses on the comparison between UV features detected by Swift-UVOT, tracing recent star formation, and the galaxy optical structure mapping older stellar populations. We performed their UV surface photometry and used BVRI photometry from other sources. Our integrated magnitudes have been analyzed and compared with corresponding values in the literature. We characterize the overall galaxy structure best fitting the UV and optical luminosity profiles using a single Sersic law. NGC 1366, NGC 1426, NGC 3818, NGC 3962 and NGC 7192 show featureless luminosity profiles. Excluding NGC 1366 which has a clear edge-on disk , n~1-2, and NGC 3818, the remaining three have Sersic's indices n~3-4 in optical and a lower index in the UV. Bright ring/arm-like structures are revealed by UV images and luminosity profiles of NGC 1415, NGC 1533, NGC 1543, NGC 2685, NGC 2974 and IC 2006. The ring/arm-like structures are different from galaxy to galaxy. Sersic indices of UV profiles for those galaxies are in the range n=1.5-3 both in S0s and in Es. In our sample optical Sersic indices are usually larger than the UV ones. (M2-V) color profiles are bluer in ring/arm-like structures with respect to the galaxy body. The lower values of Sersic's indices in the UV bands with respect to optical ones, suggesting the presence of a disk, point out that the role of the dissipation cannot be neglected in recent evolutionary phases of these early-type galaxies.