Formation and Evolution of Galaxies in Clusters

Abstract

Elliptical and S0 galaxies dominate the galaxy population in nearby rich clusters such as Coma. Studies of the evolution of the colors, M/L ratios, and line indices of early-type galaxies indicate that they have been a highly homogeneous, slowly evolving population over the last ~65% of the age of the Universe. On the other hand, recent evidence suggests that many early-type galaxies in clusters have been transformed from spiral galaxies since z~1. Arguably the most spectacular evidence for such transformations is the incidence of red merger systems in several high redshift clusters. Due to this morphological evolution the sample of early-type galaxies at high redshift is only a subsample of the sample of early-type galaxies at low redshift. This ``progenitor bias'' results in an overestimate of the mean formation redshift if simple models without morphological transformations are used. Models which incorporate morphological evolution explicitly can bring the homogeneity, slow evolution, and morphological transformations into agreement. The modeling shows that the corrected mean formation redshift of the stars in early-type galaxies may be as low as z~2 in a Lambda dominated Universe.