TIDAL INTERACTION AS THE ORIGIN OF EARLY-TYPE DWARF GALAXIES IN GROUP ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

We present a sample of dwarf galaxies that suffer ongoing disruption by the tidal force of nearby massive galaxies. Analysing structural and stellar population properties using the archival imaging and spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we find that they are likely a `smoking gun' example of the formation of early-type dwarf galaxies (dEs) in the galaxy group environment through the tidal stirring. Inner cores of these galaxies are fairly intact and the observed light profiles are well fitted with the Sersic functions, while the tidally stretched stellar halos are prominent in the outer parts. They are all located within the 50 kpc sky-projected distance from the center of host galaxies and no dwarf galaxies have relative line-of-sight velocity larger than 205 km/s to their hosts. We derive the Composite Stellar Population (CSP) properties these galaxies by fitting the SDSS optical spectra to a multiple-burst composite stellar population model. We find that these galaxies accumulate a significant fraction of stellar mass within the last 1 Gyr, while they contain a majority stellar population of intermediate age of 2 to 4 Gyr. With these evidences, we argue that tidal stirring, particularly through the galaxy-galaxy interaction, might have an important role in the formation and evolution of dEs in the group environment, where the influence of other gas stripping mechanism might be limited.