Cosmic Pathways for Compact Groups in the Milli-Millennium Simulation

Abstract: We detected 10 compact galaxy groups (CGs) at z=0 in the semianalytic galaxy catalog of Guo et al. for themilli-Millennium Cosmological Simulation (sCGs in mGuo2010a). We aimed to identify potential canonicalpathways for compact group evolution and thus illuminate the history of observed nearby CGs. By constructingmerger trees for z=0 sCG galaxies, we studied the cosmological evolution of key properties and compared themwith z=0 Hickson CGs (HCGs). We found that, once sCG galaxies come within…