Cookies

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By continuing to browse this repository, you give consent for essential cookies to be used. You can read more about our Privacy and Cookie Policy.


Durham Research Online
You are in:

KINETyS II : constraints on spatial variations of the stellar initial mass function from K-band spectroscopy.

Alton, P. D. and Smith, R. J. and Lucey, J. R. (2018) 'KINETyS II : constraints on spatial variations of the stellar initial mass function from K-band spectroscopy.', Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society., 478 (4). pp. 4464-4486.

Abstract

We investigate the spatially resolved stellar populations of a sample of seven nearby massive Early-type galaxies (ETGs), using optical and near infrared data, including K-band spectroscopy. This data offers good prospects for mitigating the uncertainties inherent in stellar population modelling by making a wide variety of strong spectroscopic features available. We report new VLT-KMOS measurements of the average empirical radial gradients out to the effective radius in the strengths of the Ca I 1.98 μm and 2.26 μm features, the Na I 2.21 μm line, and the CO 2.30 μm bandhead. Following previous work, which has indicated an excess of dwarf stars in the cores of massive ETGs, we pay specific attention to radial variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) as well as modelling the chemical abundance patterns and stellar population ages in our sample. Using state-of-the-art stellar population models we infer an [Fe/H] gradient of –0.16±0.05 per dex in fractional radius and an average [Na/Fe] gradient of –0.35±0.09. We find a large but radially-constant enhancement to [Mg/Fe] of ∼ 0.4 and a much lower [Ca/Fe] enhancement of ∼ 0.1. Finally, we find no significant IMF radial gradient in our sample on average and find that most galaxies in our sample are consistent with having a Milky Way-like IMF, or at most a modestly bottom heavy IMF (e.g. less dwarf enriched than a single power law IMF with the Salpeter slope).

Item Type:Article
Full text:(AM) Accepted Manuscript
Download PDF
(3398Kb)
Full text:(VoR) Version of Record
Download PDF
(8572Kb)
Status:Peer-reviewed
Publisher Web site:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1242
Publisher statement:This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Date accepted:04 May 2018
Date deposited:18 May 2018
Date of first online publication:14 May 2018
Date first made open access:No date available

Save or Share this output

Export:
Export
Look up in GoogleScholar