The Fundamental Plane of Galaxy Group Mergers
Abstract
We present a series of hundreds of collisionless simulations of galaxy group mergers. These simulations are designed to test whether the properties of elliptical galaxies - including the key fundamental plane scaling relation, morphology and kinematics - can be simultaneously reproduced by dry multiple mergers in galaxy groups. Preliminary results indicate that galaxy group mergers can produce elliptical remnants lying on a tilted fundamental plane, even without a central dissipational component from a starburst. This suggests that multiple mergers in groups are an alternate avenue for the formation of elliptical galaxies which could well dominate for luminous ellipticals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.1671,
title = {The Fundamental Plane of Galaxy Group Mergers},
author = {Dan Taranu and John Dubinski and Howard Yee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.1671},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
To appear in ASPCS proceedings for "Galaxy Mergers in an Evolving Universe", Hualien, Taiwan, October 2011