Tuesday

With the advent of Integral Field Unit (IFU) surveys, the visually classified early-type galaxy population has been shown to be composed of two kinematically different populations: fast rotators with rotationally supported kinematics and slow rotators with dispersion dominated kinematics. Dry major mergers are thought to be behind the production of slow rotators, as they can rapidly destroy the disc dominated nature of a galaxy. Fast rotators are thought to be formed by the slow build up of a galaxy’s bulge over time through gas-rich major and minor mergers, until it eventually overwhelms the disc. Here, we investigate the different star formation histories (SFH) of these fast and slow rotators (with stellar angular momentum measured using MaNGA survey data), using SDSS and GALEX photometry as inputs to the SFH inference code, STARPY. We compare the distributions of quenching time and rate across these two populations in order to statistically confirm whether these two populations have differing evolutionary histories. Using the inferred quenching rates of the two populations, we will be able to further constrain the mechanisms which drive the production of both fast and slow rotators.