The Kormendy relation of early-type galaxies as a function of wavelength in Abell S1063, MACS J0416.1-2403, and MACS J1149.5+2223

TL;DR

This study investigates how the Kormendy relation of early-type galaxies varies with wavelength at intermediate redshifts, revealing a smooth increase in slope from optical to near-infrared, indicating size and stellar population gradients.

Contribution

First comprehensive analysis of the wavelength dependence of the Kormendy relation for early-type galaxies at intermediate redshifts using deep HST and MUSE data.

Findings

KR slopes increase smoothly from optical to NIR bands.

Intercepts become fainter at lower redshifts due to stellar aging.

Smaller ETGs are more centrally concentrated and have stronger internal gradients.

Abstract

The wavelength dependence of the Kormendy relation (KR) is well characterised at low redshift but poorly studied at intermediate redshifts. The KR provides information on the evolution of the population of early-type galaxies (ETGs). Therefore, by studying it, we may shed light on the assembly processes of these objects and their size evolution. As studies at different redshifts are generally conducted in different rest-frame wavebands, it is important to investigate whether the KR is dependent on wavelength. Knowledge of such a dependence is fundamental to correctly interpreting the conclusions we might draw from these studies. We analyse the KRs of the three Hubble Frontier Fields clusters, Abell S1063 (z = 0.348), MACSJ0416.1-2403 (z = 0.396), and MACS J1149.5+2223 (z = 0.542), as a function of wavelength. This is the first time the KR of ETGs has been explored consistently over such a large range of wavelengths at intermediate redshifts. We exploit very deep HST photometry, ranging from the observed B-band to the H-band, and MUSE integral field spectroscopy. We improve the structural parameter estimation we performed in a previous work by means of a newly developed Python package called morphofit. With its use on cluster ETGs, we find that the KR slopes increase smoothly with wavelength from the optical to the near-infrared (NIR) bands in all three clusters, with the intercepts becoming fainter at lower redshifts due to the passive ageing of the ETG stellar populations. The slope trend is consistent with previous findings at lower redshifts. The slope increase with wavelength implies that smaller ETGs are more centrally concentrated than larger ETGs in the NIR with respect to the optical regime. As different bands probe different stellar populations in galaxies, the slope increase also implies that smaller ETGs have stronger internal gradients with respect to larger ETGs.