Related papers: Major Mergers and the Origin of Elliptical Galaxie…
The origin of boxy and disky elliptical galaxies is investigated. The results of two collisionless N-body simulations of spiral-spiral mergers with mass ratios of 1:1 and 3:1 are discussed and the projected properties of the merger remnants…
The luminosity dependence of kinematical and isophotal properties of elliptical galaxies is investigated using numerical simulations of galaxy merging, combined with semi-analytical models of hierarchical structure formation. Mergers of…
Collisionless N-body simulations of merging disk-galaxies with mass ratios ($\eta$) of 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 have been performed using direct summation with the special purpose hardware GRAPE. The simulations are used to examine whether…
N-body simulations of major spiral-spiral mergers with different mass ratios q <= 4:1 are presented. All mergers lead to spheroidal stellar systems with de Vaucouleurs-like surface density profiles, resembling elliptical galaxies. The…
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…
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…
Using semi-analytical models of galaxy formation, the origin of boxy and disky elliptical galaxies is investigated. We find that the simple scenario, motivated by N-body simulations, in which the isophotal shape is only dependent on the…
The projected kinematical properties of unequal-mass merger remnants of disk galaxies are analysed and shown to agree well with observations of disky, fast rotating elliptical galaxies. This supports the major merger hypothesis of…
Under the merger hypothesis, elliptical galaxies are built through mergers of gas-rich spirals. However, the relative paucity of HI in most normal ellipticals demands significant processing of atomic gas into other forms if this process is…
A growing body of observational evidence suggests that the luminosity, photometric shape and amount of rotational or anisotropical support in elliptical galaxies may provide vital clues to how they formed. Elliptical galaxies appear to fall…
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…
It is generally believed that major galaxy mergers with mass ratios in the range 1:1-3:1 result in remnants that have properties similar to elliptical galaxies, and minor mergers below 10:1 result in disturbed spiral galaxies. The…
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…
Elliptical galaxies formed in a major merger tend to become more nearly spherical with time, thanks to the gravitational effect of their central black hole (or black holes). Observational results indicate that elliptical galaxies with older…
We analyse N-body galaxy merger experiments involving disc galaxies. Mergers of disc-bulge-halo models are compared to those of bulge-less, disc-halo models to quantify the effects of the central bulge on the merger dynamics and on the…
We present collisionless simulations of dry mergers in groups of three to twenty-five galaxies to test the hypothesis that elliptical galaxies form at the centers of such groups. Mock observations of the central remnants confirm their…
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…
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…
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…
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…