Related papers: On the Formation of Boxy and Disky Elliptical Gala…
The formation of elliptical galaxies as a result of the merging of spiral galaxies is discussed. We analyse a large set of numerical N-Body merger simulations which show that major mergers can in principle explain the observed isophotal…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We perform a large parameter survey of 112 collisionless N-body simulations of binary mergers of disk-galaxies with mass ratios of 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 using the special purpose hardware GRAPE. The basic properties of the 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…
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…
We examine the origin of photometrical properties of N-body merger remnants from the perpective of their orbital content. We show that disc mergers alone are unlikely to form a boxy-discy dichotomy in isophotal shape, because of the…
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…
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 a large set of merger simulations of early-type disc galaxies with mass ratios of 1:1 and 3:1 and 10% of the total disc mass in gas. In contrast to the collisionless case equal-mass mergers with gas do not result in very boxy…
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…
We investigate detailed kinematical properties of simulated collisionless merger remnants of disk galaxies with mass ratios of 1:1 and 3:1. The simulations were performed by direct summation using the new special hardware device GRAPE-5. In…
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…
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…
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…
Using a semi-analytical model for galaxy formation, combined with a large N-body simulation, we investigate the origin of the dichotomy among early-type galaxies. We find that boxy galaxies originate from mergers with a progenitor mass…
We study resolution effects in numerical simulations of gas-rich and gas-poor major mergers, and show that the formation of slowly-rotating elliptical galaxies often requires a resolution that is beyond the present-day standards to be…