Related papers: Dynamical Mass Determination for Elliptical Galaxi…
We discuss the problem of using stellar kinematics of early-type galaxies to constrain the galaxies' orbital anisotropies and radial mass profiles. We demonstrate that compressing a galaxy's light distribution along the line of sight…
Elliptical galaxies are modelled with a a 4-component model: Sersic stars, LCDM dark matter (DM), hot gas and central black hole. DM is negligible in the inner regions, which are dominated by stars and the central black hole. This prevents…
The distance-redshift relation plays a fundamental role in constraining cosmological models. In this paper, we show that measurements of positions and time delays of strongly lensed images of a background galaxy, as well as those of the…
We address the problem that dynamical masses of high-redshift massive galaxies, derived using virial scaling, often come out lower than stellar masses inferred from population fitting to multi-band photometry. We compare dynamical and…
Observations have demonstrated the presence of substantial amounts of interstellar dust in elliptical galaxies, most of which is believed to be distributed diffusely over the galaxy. Absorption by dust grains has a major impact on the…
If the statistics of quasar lensing are to be used to constrain the cosmological model, the various potential systematic uncertainties in the deflector population must be accounted for. One ambiguity in the lensing properties of the…
We argue that the stellar velocity dispersion observed in an elliptical galaxy is a good proxy for the halo velocity dispersion. As dark matter halos are almost completely characterized by a single scale parameter, the stellar velocity…
We use a new non-parametric gravitational modelling tool -- \Glass{} -- to determine what quality of data (strong lensing, stellar kinematics, and/or stellar masses) are required to measure the circularly averaged mass profile of a lens and…
In this paper we compare two different diagnostics for estimating stellar masses in early-type galaxies and we establish their level of reliability. In particular, we consider the well-studied sample of 15 field elliptical galaxies selected…
The only way to map the Galaxy's gravitational potential $\Phi({\bf x})$ and the distribution of matter that produces it is by modelling the dynamics of stars and gas. Observations of the kinematics of gas provide key information about…
We test the isotropy of the local distribution of galaxies using the 2MASS extended source catalogue. By decomposing the full sky survey into distinct patches and using a combination of photometric and spectroscopic redshift data, we use…
The X-ray emitting interstellar medium of early type galaxies is often used as a tool to determine their total mass M and stellar orbital anisotropy beta profiles, based on the hypothesis of hydrostatic equilibrium for the hot gas. Here we…
The statistical properties of the ellipticities of galaxy images depend on how galaxies form and evolve, and therefore constrain models of galaxy morphology, which are key to the removal of the intrinsic alignment contamination of…
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…
The physical phenomena contributing to the galaxy growth can be tested all the way to z= 1. Galaxy mass, extinction, star formation and gas metal abundance can be measured in a robust way, as well as the distribution of the galaxy…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
We have previously reported the discovery of strong gravitational lensing by faint elliptical galaxies using the WFPC2 on HST and here we investigate their potential usefulness in putting constraints on lens mass models. We compare various…
We have studied a large number of elliptical galaxies and found a correlation between their dark matter content and the ellipticity of their visible shape. The galaxies were strictly selected so that only typical medium-size elliptical…
We address the problem of deriving, from the observed projected metallicity gradients, the intrinsic metallicity distribution of elliptical galaxies as a function of their integrals of motion. The method is illustrated by an application to…
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…