Related papers: Dissipation and the Fundamental Plane: Observation…
Merger remnants of small groups of galaxies are contrasted with relics of mergers of pairs of galaxies to determine which process produces objects that best compare to real ellipticals. In both cases, the progenitors consist of…
We study the variation of the dark matter mass fraction of elliptical galaxies as a function of their luminosity, stellar mass, and size using a sample of 29,469 elliptical galaxies culled from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We model…
In this paper, basic observational properties of elliptical galaxies such as the integrated spectra, the chemical abundances and the enhancement of $\alpha$-elements inferred from broad-band colors and line strength indices $Mg_2$ and $< Fe…
We study the orbital properties of stars in four (published) simulations of thick disks formed by: i) accretion from disrupted satellites, ii) heating of a pre-existing thin disk by a minor merger, iii) radial migration and iv) gas rich…
Multiple, sequential mergers are unavoidable in the hierarchical build-up picture of galaxies, in particular for the minor mergers that are frequent and highly likely to have occured several times for most present-day galaxies. However, the…
The kinematical properties of elliptical galaxies formed during the mergers of equal mass, stars+gas+dark matter spiral galaxies are compared to the observed low velocity dispersions found for planetary nebulae on the outskirts of…
Recent evidence based independently on spectral line strengths and dynamical modelling point towards a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF), probably implying an excess of low-mass stars in elliptical galaxies with a high…
Building galaxy merger trees from a state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamics simulation, Horizon-AGN, we perform a statistical study of how mergers and smooth accretion drive galaxy morphologic properties above $z > 1$. More…
We study resolution effects in numerical simulations of gas-rich and gas-poor major mergers, and show that the formation of slowly-rotating elliptical galaxies often requires a resolution that is beyond the present-day standards to be…
Chemical and photometric models of elliptical galaxies with infall of primordial gas, and subsequent ejection of processed material via galactic winds, are described. Ensuring that these models are consistent with the present-day…
Stars orbiting supermassive black holes can generate recurring accretion flares in repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). Here we develop an efficient formalism for analyzing the time-dependent response of a star to the removal…
Using a high resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulation of the formation of a massive spheroidal galaxy we show that elliptical galaxies can be very compact and massive at high redshift in agreement with recent observations.…
The scope of this paper is two-fold: i) to test and improve our previous models of an outside-in formation for the majority of ellipticals in the context of the SN-driven wind scenario, by means of a careful study of gas inflows/outflows;…
We used an N-body smoothed particle hydrodynamics algorithm, with a detailed treatment of star formation, supernovae feedback, and chemical enrichment, to perform eight simulations of mergers between gas-rich disc galaxies. We vary the mass…
There are many proposed mechanisms driving the morphological transformation of disk galaxies to elliptical galaxies. In this paper, we determine if the observed transformation in low mass groups can be explained by the merger histories of…
Close-in planetary systems detected by the Kepler mission present an excess of periods ratio that are just slightly larger than some low order resonant values. This feature occurs naturally when resonant couples undergo dissipation that…
We present a high-resolution simulation of globular cluster formation in a galaxy merger. For the first time in such a simulation, individual star clusters are directly identified and followed on their orbits. We quantitatively compare star…
With the aid of a simple yet robust approach we investigate the influence of dissipationless and dissipative merging on galaxy structure, and the consequent effects on the scaling laws followed by elliptical galaxies. Our results suggest…
We analyze the fundamental plane projections of elliptical galaxies as a function of luminosity, using a sample of approximately 80,000 galaxies drawn from Data Release 4 (DR4) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We separate brightest…
We use numerical simulations to examine the structure of merger remnants resulting from collisions of gas-rich spiral galaxies. When the gas fraction of the progenitors is small, the remnants structurally and kinematically resemble…