Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0604407

From: Eric F. Bell [view email]

Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:15:41 GMT (45kb)

Eight billion years of disk galaxy evolution: no galaxy is an island

Authors: Eric F. Bell, Marco Barden, Xianzhong Zheng, Casey Papovich, Emeric Le Floc'h, George Rieke, Christian Wolf, the GEMS, MIPS Instrument, COMBO-17 teams

Comments: 6 pages, To appear in the proceedings of the "Island Universes: Structure and Evolution of Disk Galaxies" conference held in Terschelling, Netherlands, July 2005, ed. R. de Jong (Springer: Dordrecht)

We present a brief discussion of the evolution of disk galaxy stellar masses, sizes, rotation velocities, and star formation rates over the last eight billion years. Recent observations have failed to detect significant evolution in the stellar mass Tully-Fisher relation, stellar mass-size relation, and the stellar mass function of disk galaxies. Yet, most z<1 star formation is in disks, and this star formation would be expected to drive a rapid growth of the total stellar mass (and therefore mass function) of disks in the last eight billion years. Such a build-up is not seen; instead, a rapid build-up in the total stellar mass in non-star-forming spheroid-dominated galaxies is observed. Large numbers of disk-dominated galaxies are systematically shutting off their star formation and building up a spheroid (or losing a disk) in the epoch 0<z<1.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604407