Abstract
[Truncated] At the fundamental level a galaxy can be described by three parameters: its mass M⋆,energy E (which relates to its size), and angular momentum J. In this thesis I study all three parameters via the mass–half-light radius and the mass–specific angular momentumrelations. The over-riding objective is to provide robust local benchmark relations which can be used to compare to simulations and high redshift observational data, to study the formation and evolution of galaxies and their components. Throughout this work I use data from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, and I fit galaxy and component light profiles using the GALFIT3 structural analysis package.
In Chapter 2 I study the stellar mass – half-light radius (M⋆−Re) relations for ‘early’and ‘late’-type galaxies as defined by either their colour, shape or morphology. The sample spans 10 wavebands from u to Ks in the redshift range of 0.01<z<0.1. The analysis shows that the choice of early- and late-type division is not critical if the fitting algorithm is robust to small changes and outliers are treated carefully. Furthermore the analysis confirms the wavelength dependence of the galaxy size with both disk and elliptical galaxies showing a similar decrease in Re of ∼ 13% from g- to Ks-band at 1010M⊙. This is less thanpreviously reported by e.g. Kelvin et al. (2012) and Vulcani et al. (2014) and we believe due to the significant improvement in imaging depth and quality.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
Awarding Institution |
|
Supervisors/Advisors |
|
Award date | 18 Jul 2016 |
Publication status | Unpublished - 2016 |