The fundamental plane of early-type galaxies in different environments

Abstract The study of Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs) in different environments is a strong tool to understand their star formation history and their evolution. The Fundamental Plane (FP) of ETGs has been studied in different environments in the nearby universe such as in groups, clusters and the field. We found that our sample of ETGs in different environments shows a good agreement with the FP of Coma cluster, except for a scatter of some galaxies. A major part of the scatter in the FP is due to variations in mass to light ratio as a result of metallicity or age trends in the stellar populations and structural or dynamical properties of galaxies. We noticed that the most deviant galaxies from the FP show many fine structures as tidal tails, shells, dust and a kinematically distinct core which indicates a past merger involving at least one gas-rich progenitor.