Major and minor mergers: global star formation efficiency

MESA, V.; ALONSO, S.; GARCIA LAMBAS, D.; O'MILL, A. L.

San Juan

Workshop; 54ª Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2011

ICATE

We study galaxy pair samples selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS-DR7) and we perform an analysis of minor and major mergers withthe aim of investigating the dependence of galaxy properties oninteractions. We build a galaxy pair catalog requiring r p < 25 kpch-1 and V < 350 km s-1 within redshift z < 0.1. By visualinspection of SDSS images we removed false identifications and weclassify the interactions into three cat- egories: pairs undergoingmerging, M; pairs with evident tidal features, T ; and non disturbed, N.We also divide the pair sample into minor and major interactionsaccording to the luminosity ratio of the galaxy members. We concludethat the characteristics of the interactions and the ratio of lumi-nosity galaxy pair members involved in a merger are important parametersin setting galaxy properties.