Structural Analogs of the Milky Way Galaxy: Stellar Populations in the Boxy Bulges of NGC 4565 and NGC 5746

We present NGC 4565 and NGC 5746 as structural analogs of our Milky Way. All three are giant, SBb - SBbc galaxies with two pseudobulges, i. e., a compact, disky, star-forming pseudobulge embedded in a vertically thick, "red and dead", boxy pseudobulge that really is a bar seen almost end-on. The stars in the boxy bulge of our Milky Way are old and enhanced in alpha elements, indicating that star formation finished within ~ 1 Gyr of when it started. Here, we present Hobby-Eberly Telescope spectroscopy of the boxy pseudobulges of NGC 4565 and NGC 5746 and show that they also are made of old and alpha-element-enhanced stars. Evidently it is not rare that the formation of stars that now live in bars finished quickly and early, even in galaxies of intermediate Hubble types whose disks still form stars now. Comparison of structural component parameters leads us to suggest that NGC 4565 and NGC 5746 are suitable analogs of the Milky Way, because they show signatures of similar evolution processes.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 postscript table, accepted by ApJ after tweaks in response to referee and after improving notation in figures; no conclusions change

The Mgb-sigma Relation of Elliptical Galaxies at z=0.37

We derive absorption indices of ellipticals in clusters at z=0.37 from medium-resolution spectroscopy together with kinematical parameters. These galaxies exhibit a relationship between the Mgb linestrength and their internal velocity dispersion similar to local dynamically hot galaxies. But for any given sigma, Mgb of the distant ellipticals is significantly lower than the mean value of the nearby sample. The difference of Mgb between the two samples is small and can be fully attributed to the younger age of the distant stellar populations in accordance with the passive evolution model. The low reduction of Mgb at a look-back time of about 5 Gyrs requires that the bulk of the stars in cluster ellipticals have formed at very high redshifts of z_f>2. For the most massive galaxies, where the reduction is even lower, z_f probably exceeds 4. Unlike most methods to measure the evolution of ellipticals using luminosities, surface brightnesses or colours, the Mgb linestrength does not depend on corrections for extinction and cosmic expansion (K-correction) and only very little on the slope of the initial mass function. The combination of a kinematical parameter with a stellar population indicator allows us to study the evolution of very similar objects. In addition, the good mass estimate provided by sigma means that the selection criteria for the galaxy sample as a whole are well controlled. (abriged)Comment: 25 pages, Latex, uses mn.sty and mncite.sty, accepted by MNRAS, also available at http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de:8001/people/ziegler/pubs.htm

Stellar kinematics of elliptical galaxies in pairs

In both galaxy pairs Arp 166 and 3C 278 the authors find radially increasing velocity dispersions indicating a perturbed, non-equilibrium state of the galaxies after the tidal interaction. In all galaxies, the increase is most pronounced in the regions which correspond to the centers of the outer isophotes. The authors suggest a scenario in which the galaxies are strongly decelerated on their orbits during the encounter. The deceleration depends on the radial position in the perturbed galaxy and vanishes in the center of the perturbed galaxy (Spitzer, 1958). In addition, the crossing time of the stars near the center is very short, implying that the tidal perturbations can be averaged over several orbital periods (e.g., Binney and Tremaine, 1987). In consequence, the central parts are not affected by the tidal interaction while the outer parts are strongly decelerated. This leads to a displacement of the central parts of the galaxies with respect to their envelopes in an anti-symmetrical way for the two components of each galaxy pair. The motions of the central parts subsequently are opposed by dynamical friction with the surrounding envelopes. Due to dynamical friction, the density of the stars increases in the wakes of the moving central parts (Mulder, 1983). The overdensity of stars in the wakes of the moving central parts efficiently decelerates the motions of the central parts. The reaction of the stars in the overdensity regions leads to an increase of the velocity dispersion mainly along the orbits of the moving central parts. The presented observations, especially the asymmetrical luminosity profiles and the radially increasing velocity dispersions support consistently the above scenario of tidal interaction between galaxies. Further spectroscopic observations are necessary in order to investigate the degree of anisotropy in the kinematically perturbed regions

Stellar population models of Lick indices with variable element abundance ratios

We provide the whole set of Lick indices from CN1 to TiO2 of Simple Stellar Population models with, for the first time, variable element abundance ratios, [alpha/Fe]=0.0, 0.3, 0.5, [alpha/Ca]=-0.1, 0.0, 0.2, 0.5, and [alpha/N]=-0.5, 0.0. The models cover ages between 1 and 15 Gyr, metallicities between 1/200 and 3.5 solar. Our models are free from the intrinsic alpha/Fe bias that was imposed by the Milky Way template stars up to now, hence they reflect well-defined alpha/Fe ratios at all metallicities. The models are calibrated with Milky Way globular clusters for which metallicities and alpha/Fe ratios are known from independent spectroscopy of individual stars. The metallicities that we derive from the Lick indices Mgb and Fe5270 are in excellent agreement with the metallicity scale by Zinn & West (1984), and we show that the latter provides total metallicity rather than iron abundance. We can reproduce the relatively strong CN-absorption features CN1 and CN2 of galactic globular clusters with models in which nitrogen is enhanced by a factor three. An enhancement of carbon, instead, would lead to serious inconsistencies with the indices Mg1 and C24668. The calcium sensitive index Ca4227 of globular clusters is well matched by our models with [Ca/Fe]= 0.3, including the metal-rich Bulge clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553. From our alpha/Fe enhanced models we infer that the index [MgFe] defined by Gonzalez (1993) is quite independent of alpha/Fe, but still slightly decreases with increasing alpha/Fe. We define a slight modification of this index that is completely independent of alpha/Fe and serves best as a tracer of total metallicity. Searching for blue indices that give similar information as Mgb and Fe, we find that CN1 and Fe4383 may be best suited to estimate alpha/Fe ratios of objects at redshifts z~1. (Abridged)Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, plus 8 pages model tables. Accepted by MNRAS. Models are also available in at ftp://ftp.mpe.mpg.de/people/dthomas/SSP

New Clues on the Calcium Underabundance in Early-Type Galaxies

We use our new stellar population models, which include effects from variable element abundance ratios, to model the Ca4227 absorption line indices of early-type galaxies (Trager et al.), and to derive calcium element abundances. We find that calcium, although being an alpha-element, is depressed with respect to the other alpha-elements by up to a factor 2. This confirms quantitatively earlier speculations that early-type galaxies are calcium underabundant. We find a clear correlation between alpha/Ca ratio and central velocity dispersion, which implies that more massive galaxies are more calcium underabundant. Interestingly this correlation extends down to the dwarf spheroidal galaxies of the Local Group for which alpha/Ca ratios have been measured from high-resolution spectroscopy of individual stars (Shetrone et al.). The increase of the calcium underabundance with galaxy mass balances the higher total metallicities of more massive galaxies, so that calcium abundance in early-type galaxies is fairly constant and in particular does not increase with increasing galaxy mass. This result may be the key to understand why the CaII triplet absorption of early-type galaxies at 8600 A is constant to within 5 per cent over a large range of velocity dispersions (Saglia et al.; Cenarro et al.). The origin of the calcium underabundance in early-type galaxies remains yet to be understood. We argue that formation timescales are disfavoured to produce calcium underabundance, and that the option of metallicity dependent supernova yields may be the most promising track to follow.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted by MNRA