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oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/451182023-08-26T17:25:04Zcom_20.500.14352_14col_20.500.14352_15

Role of galaxy mergers in cosmic star formation history Shi, Yong Rieke, George Lotz, Jennifer Pérez González, Pablo Guillermo 52 Luminous infrared galaxies Ldss redshift surveys Origins deep survey Digital sky survey Field galaxies Stellar mass Distant galaxies Spitzer view Evolution Morphology Astrofísica Astronomía (Física) © 2009 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We thank the anonymous referee for detailed comments. Support for this work was provided by NASA through contract 1255094 issued by JPL/California Institute of Technology. J.M.L. acknowledges support from Leo Goldberg Fellowship sponsored by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. P.G.P.-G. acknowledges support from the Spanish Programa Nacional de Astronomía y Astrofísica under grants AYA 2006– 02358 and AYA 2006–15698–C02–02, and from the Ramón y Cajal Program financed by the Spanish Government and the European Union. We present a morphology study of intermediate-redshift (0.2 < z < 1.2) luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) and general field galaxies in the GOODS fields using a revised asymmetry measurement method optimized for deep fields. By taking careful account of the importance of the underlying sky-background structures, our new method does not suffer from systematic bias and offers small uncertainties. By redshifting local LIRGs and low-redshift GOODS galaxies to different higher redshifts, we have found that the redshift dependence of the galaxy asymmetry due to surface-brightness dimming is a function of the asymmetry itself, with larger corrections for more asymmetric objects. By applying redshift-, infrared (IR)-luminosity- and optical-brightness-dependent asymmetry corrections, we have found that intermediate-redshift LIRGs generally show highly asymmetric morphologies, with implied merger fractions ~50% up to z = 1.2, although they are slightly more symmetric than local LIRGs. For general field galaxies, we find an almost constant relatively high merger fraction (20%-30%). The B-band luminosity functions (LFs) of galaxy mergers are derived at different redshifts up to z = 1.2 and confirm the weak evolution of the merger fraction after breaking the luminosity-density degeneracy. The IR LFs of galaxy mergers are also derived, indicating a larger merger fraction at higher IR luminosity. The integral of the merger IR LFs indicates a dramatic evolution of the merger-induced IR energy density [(1 + z)^~(5-6)], and that galaxy mergers start to dominate the cosmic IR energy density at z greater than or ~ 1. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Leo Goldberg Fellowship National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), EE.UU. Programa Nacional de Astronomía y Astrofísica (PNAyA), España Unión Europea (UE) Ayudas para contratos Ramón y Cajal (RYC), MINECO Depto. de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica Fac. de Ciencias Físicas TRUE pub 2023-06-20T04:16:35Z 2023-06-20T04:16:35Z 2009-06-01 journal article https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/45118 0004-637X 10.1088/0004-637X/697/2/1764 eng 1255094 AYA 2006– 02358 AYA 2006–15698–C02–02 open access application/pdf American Astronomical Society