Photometric Decomposition of Mergers in Disk Galaxies

Mezcua, M.; Lobanov, A. P.; Mediavilla, E.; Karouzos, M.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 784, Issue 1, article id. 16, 9 pp. (2014).

Advertised on:
3
2014
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
24
Refereed citations
21
Description
Several observational studies and numerical simulations suggest that mergers must contribute to the evolution of galaxies; however, the role that they play is not yet fully understood. In this paper we study a sample of 52 double nucleus disk galaxies that are considered as candidates for a minor merger event. The luminosity of each of the nuclei and their relative separation are derived from a multi-component photometric fit of the galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey optical images. We find that the nuclei in most of the sources have projected separations <=4 kpc. The ratio of nuclear luminosities indicates that most of the systems are likely in the coalescence stage of a major merger. This is supported by the existence of a single galaxy disk in 65% of the systems studied and the finding of a correlation between nuclear luminosity and host luminosity for the single-disk systems: those sources fitted with as single disk are in a more evolved stage of the merger and present an enhancement of the nuclear luminosity compared to the double-disk systems, as expected from simulations of galaxy mergers. Finally, we identify a sample of 19 double nucleus disk galaxies in which the two nuclei are physically separated by <=1 kpc and constitute thus a sample of sub-kpc binary active galactic nucleus candidates.
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