Related papers: Models of Cuspy Triaxial Galaxies
N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Such simulations confirm and quantify the qualitative expectation that rapid…
The Bayesian MAMPOSSt mass/orbit modeling algorithm is used to jointly fit the distribution of elliptical, spiral (and irregular), and lenticular galaxies in projected phase space, on 3 stacked clusters (with normalized positions and…
Observations show that early-type galaxies contain a considerable amount of interstellar dust, most of which is believed to exist as a diffusely distributed component. We construct a four-parameter elliptical galaxy model in order to…
We explore the use of the tangential component of weak lensing shear to characterize the ellipticity of clusters of galaxies. We introduce an ellipticity estimator, and quantify its properties for isolated clusters from LCDM N-body…
We present a grid-based non-parametric approach to obtain a triaxial three-dimensional luminosity density from its surface brightness distribution. Triaxial deprojection is highly degenerate and our approach illustrates the resulting…
As the volume and quality of modern galaxy surveys increase, so does the difficulty of measuring the cosmological signal imprinted in galaxy shapes. Weak gravitational lensing sourced by the most massive structures in the Universe generates…
We assemble a statistical set of global mass models for ~2,000 nearly spherical SDSS galaxies at a mean redshift of 0.12 based on their aperture velocity dispersions and newly derived luminosity profiles in conjunction with published…
The standard cosmological model, now strongly constrained by direct observation at early epochs, is very successful in describing the structure of the evolved universe on large and intermediate scales. Unfortunately, serious contradictions…
Dedicated photometric and spectroscopic surveys have provided unambiguous evidence for a strong stellar mass-size evolution of galaxies within the last 10 Gyr. The likely progenitors of today's most massive galaxies are remarkably small,…
Gas-poor galaxies can be modelled as composite collisionless stellar systems, with a dark matter halo and one or more stellar components, representing different stellar populations. The dynamical evolution of such composite systems is often…
We use N-body simulations combined with semi-analytic models to compute the clustering properties of modeled galaxies at z~3, and confront these predictions with the clustering properties of the observed population of Lyman-break galaxies…
Galaxies grow primarily via accretion-driven star formation in discs and merger-driven growth of bulges. These processes are implicit in semi-analytical models of galaxy formation, with bulge growth in particular relating directly to the…
Lens models appropriate for representing cusped galaxies and clusters are developed. The analogue of the odd number theorem for cusped density distributions is given. Density cusps are classified into strong, isothermal or weak, according…
The mass and anisotropy of an elliptical galaxy can be simultaneously determined from velocity dispersion and line profile shape measurements. We describe the principles, techniques, and limitations of this approach, and the results…
Compact elliptical galaxies form a rare class of stellar system (~30 presently known) characterized by high stellar densities and small sizes and often harboring metal-rich stars. They were thought to form through tidal stripping of massive…
Dynamical systems in equilibrium have a stationary entropy; we suggest that elliptical galaxies, as stellar systems in a stage of quasi-equilibrium, may have a unique specific entropy. This uniqueness, a priori unknown, should be reflected…
Recent work on the equilibrium and stability of ellipsoidal stellar systems is reviewed. The absence of constant-density cores in early-type galaxies implies that chaos and high-order resonances are generic features of the motion in…
We test the hypothesis that elliptical galaxies are formed by violent mergers in a universe with hierarchical structure formation. Within the framework of a semi-analytic scheme for galaxy formation, we predict the distribution of…
We use the statistics of strong gravitational lensing from the CLASS survey to impose constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profile of elliptical galaxies. This approach differs from much recent work, where the luminosity…
The traditional view of elliptical galaxies has been that they formed in a single, rapid burst of star formation at high redshift, and have evolved quiescently since that time. In opposition to this traditional view is evidence that at…