Related papers: The Morphological Evolution of Merger Remnants
Recent studies have shown that massive galaxies in the distant universe are surprisingly compact, with typical sizes about a factor of three smaller than equally massive galaxies in the nearby universe. It has been suggested that these…
High-resolution numerical simulations of galaxy mergers are analysed. The global structure and isophotal shapes of the merger remnants are in good agreement with the observations. Whereas equal-mass mergers lead to anisotropic, boxy…
The last decade of research on elliptical galaxies has produced a wealth of new information concerning both their detailed structure and their global scaling relations. We review the old and new results about isophote shapes and…
The structural properties of elliptical galaxies are consistent with their formation in a merging hierarchy. In this picture, the role of gaseous processes and dissipation decreased with increasing mass creating preferentially rotationally…
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.…
Several recent observations suggest that gas-poor (dissipationless) mergers of elliptical galaxies contribute significantly to the build-up of the massive end of the red sequence. We perform a series of major merger simulations to…
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…
We have carried out computer simulations to study the effect of merging on the fundamental plane (FP) relation. Initially, systems are spherical Jaffe models following a simple scaling relation (M/R_e^2 = constant). They have been put on…
Galactic spheroids can form as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers of disks. Detailed analyses of the photometric properties, the intrinsic orbital structure, the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the kinemetry of simulated…
Recent work has suggested that the amplitude of the size mass relation of massive early type galaxies evolves with redshift. Here we use a semi-analytical galaxy formation model to study the size evolution of massive early type galaxies. We…
We present near-IR K-band imaging and spectroscopy of a sample of galaxy mergers, which we use to derive light profile indices, absolute magnitudes and central velocity dispersions. It is found that the light distributions of mergers more…
We use numerical simulations to study the kinematic structure of remnants formed from mergers of equal-mass disk galaxies. In particular, we show that remnants of dissipational mergers, which include the radiative cooling of gas, star…
A major goal of contemporary astrophysics is understanding the origin of the most massive galaxies in the universe, particularly nearby ellipticals and spirals. Theoretical models of galaxy formation have existed for many decades, although…
We numerically investigate chemodynamical evolution of major disk-disk galaxy mergers in order to explore the origin of mass-dependent chemical, photometric, and spectroscopic properties observed in elliptical galaxies. We particularly…
Essentially all Ultra-Luminous IR Galaxies (ULIRGs) are in disturbed, interacting or merging systems. It is known that interactions tend to induce galactic starbursts. Thus, elliptical galaxies which are formed in mergers will tend to have…
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…
(ABRIDGED) We examine the fundamental scaling relations of elliptical galaxies formed through mergers. Using hundreds of simulations to judge the impact of progenitor galaxy properties on merger remnants, we find that gas dissipation…
It is commonly accepted that a merger of two spiral galaxies results in a remnant with an elliptical-like surface-brightness profile. Surprisingly, our recent study (Chitre & Jog 2002) of the 2MASS data for twenty-seven advanced mergers of…
Numerical simulations of galaxy mergers are a powerful tool to study these fundamental events in the hierarchical built-up of galaxies. Recent progress have been made owing to improved modeling, increased resolution and large statistical…
Observations consistently show that elliptical galaxies follow a tight "fundamental plane" scaling relation between size, mean surface brightness and velocity dispersion, with the form $R \propto \sigma^{a}\mu^{b}$. This relation not only…