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Description
We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to investigate the properties of massive elliptical galaxies in the local Universe (z<=0.08) that have unusually blue optical colours. Through careful inspection, we distinguish elliptical from non-elliptical morphologies among a large sample of similarly blue galaxies with high central light concentrations (c_r_>=2.6). These blue ellipticals comprise 3.7 per cent of all c_r>=2.6 galaxies with stellar masses between 10^10^ and 10^11^h^-2^M_{sun}_. Using published fibre spectrum diagnostics, we identify a unique subset of 172 non-star-forming ellipticals with distinctly blue urz colours and young (<3Gyr) light-weighted stellar ages. These recently quenched ellipticals (RQEs) have a number density of 2.7-4.7x10^-5^h^3^/Mpc^3^ and sufficient numbers above 2.5x10^10^h^-2^M_{sun}_ to account for more than half of the expected quiescent growth at late cosmic time assuming that this phase lasts 0.5Gyr. RQEs have properties that are consistent with a recent merger origin (i.e. they are strong 'first-generation' elliptical candidates), yet few involved a starburst strong enough to produce an E+A signature. The preferred environment of RQEs (90 per cent reside at the centres of <3x10^12^h^-1^M_{sun}_ groups) agrees well with the 'small group scale' predicted for maximally efficient spiral merging on to their halo centre and rules out satellite-specific quenching processes. The high incidence of Seyfert and LINER activity in RQEs and their plausible descendants may heat the atmospheres of small host haloes sufficiently to maintain quenching.
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