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Accueil > Séminaires > Scaling relations of massive spheroids

Scaling relations of massive spheroids in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and implications for dry and wet merger models

Francesco Shankar (Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Garching)

One of the most important and still largely unsolved problems in Cosmology is the formation and evolution of Early-type galaxies.
In order to shed some light on this issue we have analyzed a large sample of local massive spheroids
from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our work has revealed many interesting and completely new features.
The size-age relation at fixed stellar mass is flat, the local stellar mass function has a significantly less strong exponential fall-off than previous measurements, and the color-magnitude relation of local early-type galaxies presents a strong steepening at high masses. By developing a series of basic Halo Occupation Distribution galaxy evolution models, I will discuss how such observations can (if at all) be interpreted within the hierarchical scenario for galaxy formation. I will continue
showing results from more advanced and complete Semi-analytic Models of galaxy evolution, and finally discuss the connection
with the evolution of super-massive Black Holes.