Metallicity Gradients of CALIFA Shell Galaxies

Shells in early-type galaxies are low surface brightness tidal debris, which are wide concentric arcs of overdense stellar regions with large opening angles. The most widely accepted mechanism today for shell formation is the merger scenario, but the dominant merger type producing shells is not clearly understood yet: major/minor and wet/dry mergers. Since shells are regarded as smoking-gun evidence of merging events, detailed understanding of shell galaxies is very useful to constrain the formation process of early-type galaxies. In this study, we investigate the metallicity gradients of eight early-type shell galaxies using CALIFA IFU data to better understand the nature and origins of galaxy shells. We estimate simple stellar population properties out to three effective radius from the measurement of Lick/IDS absorption line indices. We compare the metallicity gradients of shell galaxies with those of normal early-type galaxies in the same mass range. In this presentation, we discuss how much the gradients of shell galaxies are different from those of normal early-type galaxies and what the existence of galaxy shells implies about galaxy formation.