Related papers: A method for comparing discrete kinematic data and…
We examine the idea that dynamical parameters can be estimated by identifying locations in the solar neighbourhood where simulated velocity distributions match the observed local distribution. Here, the dynamical influence of both the…
We develop a formalism for calculating probabilities for the outcomes of stellar dynamical interactions, based on results from $N$-body scattering experiments. We focus here on encounters involving up to six particles and calculate…
Given that secular perturbations in a binary system not only excite high orbital eccentricities but also alter the planetary orbital inclination, the classical Keplerian orbital model is no longer applicable for orbital retrieval. The…
A powerful method to measure the mass profile of a galaxy is through the velocities of tracer particles distributed through its halo. Transforming this kind of data accurately to a mass profile M(r), however, is not a trivial problem. In…
This paper explores resonance-driven secular evolution between a bar and dark-matter halo using N-body simulations. We make direct comparisons to our analytic theory (Weinberg & Katz 2005) to demonstrate the great difficulty that an N-body…
In this paper we analyse the methodology to derive the bar pattern speed from dynamical simulations. The results are robust to the changes in the vertical-scale height and in the mass-to-light (M/L) ratios. There is a small range of…
To investigate the origins of S0 galaxies, we present a new method of analyzing their stellar kinematics from discrete tracers such as planetary nebulae. This method involves binning the data in the radial direction so as to extract the…
We present a simple method for assessing the predictive performance of high-dimensional models directly in data space when only samples are available. Our approach is to compare the quantiles of observables predicted by a model to those of…
(abridged) We combined several N-body methods in order to investigate the interaction scenario between NGC 4449 and DDO 125, a close companion in projected space. In a first step fast restricted N-body models are used to confine a region in…
By collecting distances from the literature, a set of 73 planetary nebulae with mean distances of high accuracy is derived. This sample is used for recalibration of the mass-radius relationship, used by many statistical distance methods. An…
Detailed studies of galaxy formation require clear definitions of the structural components of galaxies. Precisely defined components also enable better comparisons between observations and simulations. We use a subsample of eighteen…
We present a new framework for modelling discrete kinematic data. Current techniques typically involve binning. Our approach works directly with the discrete data and uses maximum-likelihood methods to assess the probability of the dataset…
We examine a sample of 30 edge-on spiral and S0 galaxies that have boxy and peanut-shaped bulges. We compute model stellar kinematics by solving the Jeans equations for axisymmetric mass distributions derived from K-band images. These…
We just started an observational program to obtain 2D kinematics of nuclear bars, to be compared to N body simulations of single and double-barred galaxies.
Approximate N-body methods, such as FastPM and COLA, have been successful in modelling halo and galaxy clustering statistics, but their low resolution on small scales is a limitation for applications that require high precision. Full N-body…
The inner ~200 pc region of the Milky Way contains a nuclear stellar disc and a nuclear star cluster that are embedded in the larger Galactic bar. These stellar systems overlap spatially, which makes it challenging to separate stars that…
We present optical $\textit{BVRI}$ photometry, H$\alpha$ IFU velocity fields, and H$\alpha$ long-slit rotation curves for a sample of four nearby spiral galaxies having a range of morphologies and inclinations. We show that the…
We present a performance analysis of the DiskMass Survey. The survey uses collisionless tracers in the form of disk stars to measure the surface-density of spiral disks, to provide an absolute calibration of the stellar mass-to-light ratio,…
We use mock images of $z=0.1$ galaxies in the 100 Mpc EAGLE simulation to establish the differences between the sizes and morphologies inferred from the stellar mass distributions and the optical light distributions. The optical, $r$-band…
Dynamical simulations are a fundamental tool for studying the secular evolution of disc galaxies. Even at their maximum resolution, they still follow a limited number of particles and typically resolve scales of the order of a few tens of…