Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Morphologically-selected galaxy merger fractions and their direct comparison to close-pair samples
Clicks: 1
ID: 319423
2026
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This
article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score —
reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
Reader Engagement
0.0
/100
1 views
0 readers
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Ranked #889 of 913 articles by views in monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Most read
Least read
Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 913 in total.
Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet mintedCreate a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.
5
SUSD
one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
Abstract Galaxy mergers are a central driver of galaxy evolution across cosmic time, and thus, quantifying their frequency is critical for constraining hierarchical models of galaxy formation. Motivated by the need to robustly quantify these fractions and their evolution, we build on our previous close-pair analysis by exploring morphological identification techniques within the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS), using the D10 (COSMOS) field, which covers an area of 1.47 deg2. While close-pairs trace the early stages of galaxy interactions, morphological methods probe more advanced phases of the merging process, including systems with disturbed structures and post-merger remnants. We present galaxy merger fractions over the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.9 using visual classification and automated identification based on non-parametric statistics: concentration (C), asymmetry (A), smoothness (S), Gini (G), and M20, applied to HST/ACS imaging. To enhance the detection of subtle structural perturbations, we measure asymmetry on unsharp-masked images. We find relatively little overlap between visually and automatically identified samples, which highlights their distinct sensitivities and limitations. Moreover, galaxy merger fractions derived from morphological disturbances are consistently higher than those from close-pair counts at all redshifts. This potentially reflects how each method probes different stages of the merger process, with distinct observability timescales, as well as the fact that morphologically disturbed galaxies, at a given redshift, are typically the later-stage descendants of close-pairs from earlier epochs. This comparison allows us to examine systematic differences between identification techniques and assess how they impact the observed evolution of the galaxy merger fraction.
| Reference Key |
openalex_W7167058252
Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using
SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
|
|---|---|
| Authors | Melissa F. Fuentealba-Fuentes, L. J. M. Davies, A. S. G. Robotham, Sabine Bellstedt, Claudia del P. Lagos, M. J. I. Brown, M. Siudek |
| Journal | monthly notices of the royal astronomical society |
| Year | 2026 |
| DOI |
10.1093/mnras/stag1251
|
| URL | |
| Keywords | Keywords not found |
Citations
No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.