An isolated, compact early-type galaxy with a diffuse stellar component: merger origin?

Abstract

The relation between the size and luminosity for both bright and faint early-type galaxies has been repeatedly discussed as a crucial proxy for understanding evolutionary scenarios, as galaxies grow and lose their stellar mass in different physical processes. The class of compact early-type galaxies (cEs) are, however, distinct outliers from this relation and mainly found around massive galaxies in the centres of groups and clusters. The recent discovery of a cE in isolation provided a new opportunity to understand their formation scenario in a different environment. Here, we report the discovery of an isolated cE, CGCG 036-042, using imagery from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The CGCG 036-042 has an $r$-band absolute magnitude (M$_{r}$) of $-$18.21 mag and a half-light radius (R$_{e}$) of 559 pc. Interestingly, it possesses a faint outer stellar component, which extends up to 10 kpc from its centre and has a nearly constant $r$-band surface brightness of $\sim$26 mag/arcsec$^{2}$. ESO-VLT long-slit spectroscopic data reveal that the simple stellar population (SSP) properties are fairly similar to those of previously identified cEs, with an intermediate-age of 7.15$\pm$1.17 Gyr, a metallicity of --0.18$\pm$0.07 dex and a supersolar alpha-element abundance of 0.2$\pm$0.05 dex. The SSP metallicity also shows a significant decline outward from the center, by 0.5 dex over one half light radius. We discuss the possible origin of this galaxy and suggest that it might have originated from a merger of even smaller objects -- a well established scenario for the formation of massive early-type galaxies.