The assembly of stellar haloes in massive Early-Type Galaxies

Abstract

Massive (Mstellar 5×1010 M·) Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs) must build an outer stellar envelope over cosmic time in order to account for their remarkable size evolution. This is similar to what occurs to nearby Late-Type Galaxies (LTGs), which create their stellar haloes out of the debris of lower mass systems. We analysed the outer parts of massive ETGs at z < 1 by exploiting the Hubble Ultra Deep Field imaging. These galaxies store 10-30% of their stellar mass at distances 10 < 50, in contrast to the low percentages (< 5%) found for LTGs. We find evidence for a progressive outskirt development with redshift driven solely via merging.