Properties of Early-Type, Dry Galaxy Mergers and the Origin of Massive Elliptical Galaxies

By T. Naab, S. Khochfar, A. Burkert. 2005

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The luminosity dependence of kinematic and isophotal properties of elliptical galaxies is investigated using numerical simulations of galaxy merging, combined with semianalytical models of hierarchical structure formation. Mergers of spiral galaxies as the only formation mechanism for elliptical galaxies can reproduce neither the kinematic and photometric properties of very massive elliptical galaxies nor the change from rotationally flattened, disky systems to anisotropic, boxy systems with increasing luminosity. We present numerical simulations showing that binary mergers of early-type galaxies open an additional channel for the formation of anisotropic, slowly rotating, boxy elliptical galaxies. Including this channel in a semianalytical model, we can successfully reproduce the observed trend that more luminous giant elliptical galaxies are more boxy and less flattened by rotation. This trend can be more strongly reproduced by suppressing residual gas infall and star formation for galaxies with stellar bulge masses M* ≥ 3 × 1010 M☉. Hence we propose that mergers of early-type galaxies play an important role in the assembly of massive elliptical galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3029147256a765ca2b2efe794409783d1e892b7a

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Citations in the corpus

Post-starburst galaxies: more than just an interesting curiosity (2008, background): “This has important implications for our understanding of the physical processes involved in the buildup of the red sequence, and in particular the subsequent role of dry mergers in forming the shape of the red-sequence mass function observed today (Bell et al. 2006; Naab et al. 2006).”
Discriminating Between the Physical Processes that Drive Spheroid Size Evolution (2009, background): “…subsequent merger history, potentially mapping between gas-rich or equal density mergers and dry, lower density mergers (Mihos & Hernquist 1994a; Barnes & Hernquist 1996; Cox et al. 2006b; Naab et al. 2006a; Oñorbe et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2006a; Jesseit et al. 2007; Hopkins et al. 2009b,e).”
The Kinematic Structure of Merger Remnants (2006, result): “A similar result has been found for mergers of dissipationless remnants by Naab et al. (2006) and we note that other work has also shown that multiple merger remnants can remain on the fundamental plane (Capelato et al. 1995; Nipoti et al. 2003; González-Garćıa & van Albada 2003; Boylan-Kolchin…”
The effect of mass ratio on the morphology and time-scales of disc galaxy mergers: Effect of mass ratio on merger morphology (2009, background): “Despite their massive bulges, these low-mass disc components are bright enough in g-band to affect the remnants’ quantitative morphologies (see also Barnes 2002, Springel et al. 2005, Naab et al. 2006, Robertson et al. 2006).”
AGN-driven quenching of star formation: morphological and dynamical implications for early-type galaxies (2013, background): “As already highlighted by many authors (e.g. Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006; Khochfar & Silk 2006b; Maller et al. 2006; Naab et al. 2006, 2007; Bournaud et al. 2007; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; Guo & White 2008; Hopkins et al. 2009; Nipoti et al. 2009; Feldmann et al. 2010; Shankar et al. 2013, and…”
The ATLAS3D project – I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria (2010, background): “…the gas tends to form a disk, so that the end result of the merger, after the gas has been removed from the system by ejection, heating or conversion to stars, will be a red stellar system dominated by rotation (Cox et al. 2006; Naab et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2006; Jesseit et al. 2009).”
The ATLAS3D project - II. Morphologies, kinemetric features and alignment between photometric and kinematic axes of early-type galaxies (2011, unknown): “V/σ distributions that, generally, agree well with the observations (GonzálezGarcı́a, Balcells & Olshevsky 2006; Naab et al. 2006).”
NICMOS Imaging of DRGs in the HDF-S: A Relation between Star Formation and Size at z ~ 2.5 (2006, background): “Such gas-rich mergers are more likely at higher redshift, where relatively little of the gaseous content of galaxies has already been used in star formation (Khochfar&Silk 2006a, 2006b; Naab et al. 2006), and the generic merger rate is much higher.”
How do minor mergers promote inside-out growth of ellipticals, transforming the size, density profile and dark matter fraction? (2012, background): “A major merger will definitely dominate the late mass assembly history of the galaxy with a significant impact on its abundance gradients, kinematics and, eventually, morphology (White 1978; Naab et al. 2006; Bois 2011).”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy colour bimodality (2017, background): “…in-situ star formation, passive red galaxies may grow further in M? down to z = 0 by acquiring new stars through mergers (van Dokkum et al. 1999; Naab et al. 2006), with accreted stellar mass fractions of 50% or higher for galaxies exceeding 1011M (Rodriguez-Gomez et al. 2015; Pillepich et al.…”
Merger Histories of Galaxy Halos and Implications for Disk Survival (2007, background): “Multiple events of this kind could be important in forming elliptical galaxies (Hernquist 1993; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2005; Robertson et al. 2006a; Naab et al. 2006).”