Isolated elliptical galaxies in the local Universe
  We have studied a sample of 89 very isolated, elliptical galaxies at z < 0.08
and compared their properties with elliptical galaxies located in a
high-density environment such as the Coma supercluster. Our aim is to probe the
role of environment on the morphological transformation and quenching of
elliptical galaxies as a function of mass. In addition, we elucidate the nature
of a particular set of blue and star-forming isolated ellipticals identified
here. We study physical properties of ellipticals such as color, specific star
formation rate, galaxy size, and stellar age, as a function of stellar mass and
environment based on SDSS data. We analyze the blue star-forming isolated
ellipticals in more detail, through photometric characterization using GALFIT,
and infer their star formation history using STARLIGHT. Among the isolated
ellipticals ~ 20% are blue, 8% are star forming, and ~ 10% are recently
quenched, while among the Coma ellipticals ~ 8% are blue and just <= 1% are
star forming or recently quenched. There are four isolated galaxies (~ 4.5%)
that are blue and star forming at the same time. These galaxies, with masses
between 7 x 10^9 and 2 x 10^10 h-2 M_sun, are also the youngest galaxies with
light-weighted stellar ages <= 1 Gyr and exhibit bluer colors toward the galaxy
center. Around 30-60% of their present-day luminosity, but only < 5% of their
present-day mass, is due to star formation in the last 1 Gyr. The processes of
morphological transformation and quenching seem to be in general independent of
environment since most of elliptical galaxies are 'red and dead', although the
transition to the red sequence should be faster for isolated ellipticals. In
some cases, the isolated environment seems to propitiate the rejuvenation of
ellipticals by recent (< 1 Gyr) cold gas accretion.
