The Fundamental Scaling Relations of Elliptical Galaxies

By Brant Robertson, Thomas J. Cox, L. Hernquist, M. Franx, P. Hopkins, P. Martini, Volker Springel. 2005

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the fundamental scaling relations of elliptical galaxies formed through mergers. Using hundreds of simulations to judge the impact of progenitor galaxy properties on the properties of merger remnants, we find that gas dissipation provides an important contribution to tilt in the fundamental plane (FP) relation. Dissipationless mergers of disks produce remnants that occupy a plane similar to that delineated by the virial relation. As the gas content of progenitor disk galaxies is increased, the tilt of the resulting FP relation increases and the slope of the Re-M⋆ relation steepens. For gas fractions fgas > 30%, the simulated FP scalings (Re ∝ σ1.55I) approach those observed in the K band (Re ∝ σ1.53I). The dissipationless merging of spheroidal galaxies and the remerging of disk galaxy remnants roughly maintain the tilt of the FP occupied by the progenitor ellipticals., Dry merging of spheroidal systems at redshifts z < 1 is then expected to maintain the stellar-mass FP relations imprinted by gas-rich merging during the epoch of rapid spheroid and supermassive black hole growth at redshifts z ≈ 1-3. We estimate that ≈40%-100% of the FP tilt induced by structural properties, as opposed to stellar population effects, owes to trends in the central total-to-stellar mass ratio Mtotal/M⋆ produced by dissipation. Gas cooling allows for an increase in central stellar phase-space density relative to dissipationless mergers, thereby decreasing the central Mtotal/M⋆. Lower mass systems obtain greater phase-space densities than higher mass systems, producing a galaxy mass-dependent central Mtotal/M⋆ and a corresponding tilt in the FP. We account for these trends in the importance of dissipation with galaxy mass in terms of the inefficient cooling of collisionally heated gas in massive halos and dynamically varying gas consumption timescales in smaller systems.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eab643d7b8510ca1648640aa76841f4e5a17ab1d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. M. Cappellari
4. Thomas J. Cox
5. R. Somerville
6. Volker Springel
7. T. Naab
8. R. Dav'e

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. M. Cappellari
4. Thomas J. Cox
5. R. Somerville
6. Volker Springel
7. T. Naab
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• Star formation in semi-analytic galaxy formation models with multiphase gas (2015, background): “The treatment of mergerdriven bursts is based on the results of hydrodynamic simulations of binary galaxy mergers (Robertson et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2009a).”
• ON SIZES, KINEMATICS, M/L GRADIENTS, AND LIGHT PROFILES OF MASSIVE COMPACT GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 (2010, methodology): “At a given velocity dispersion, the virial es- timator √ M re is larger for runs with a higher dissipational fraction, implying that mergers of varying dissipational fraction are non-homologous (see also Robertson et al. 2006; Hopkins, Cox & Hernquist 2008).”
• Extreme Gas Kinematics in the z = 2.2 Powerful Radio Galaxy MRC 1138–262: Evidence for Efficient Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback in the Early Universe? (2006, background): “Robertson et al. (2006) find that these models can explain the tilt in the fundamental plane assuming dissipative, high-redshift merging of galaxies with gas fractions >0.3, including star formation and AGN-related feedback, and DiMatteo et al. (2005) are able to reproduce the observedM-…”
• Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass (2008, background): “On the one hand, the structural similarity of elliptical galaxies and classical bulges presumably reflects a violent merger history (e.g., Burstein et al. 1997; Robertson et al. 2006).”
• THE METALLICITY EVOLUTION OF INTERACTING GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “While the main body of our simulations code has been used for numerous other studies (see, e.g., Cox et al. 2006a,b; Robertson et al. 2006a,b,c), the inclusion of time–delayed gas recycling is a new feature which is described.”
• CAN MINOR MERGING ACCOUNT FOR THE SIZE GROWTH OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES? NEW RESULTS FROM THE CANDELS SURVEY (2011, background): “They are therefore expected theoretically to experience less dissipation in their formation, possibly leading to less compact remnants (Robertson et al. 2006; Khochfar & Silk 2006; Hopkins et al. 2010b; Shankar et al. 2011).”
• Molecular Hydrogen and Global Star Formation Relations in Galaxies (2007, methodology): “Artificial fragmentation of the ISM in disks may be closely relat d to the angular momentum problem for producing realistic disk galaxies in cosmological simulations (see, e.g., §6 ofRobertson et al. (2004) and Robertson et al. (2006a)).”
• HOW DO DISKS SURVIVE MERGERS? (2008, methodology): “…has been demonstrated in a number of works (Weil et al. 1998; Sommer-Larsen et al. 1999, 2003; Thacker & Couchman 2000, 2001; Governato et al. 2007; Robertson et al. 2006a; Springel et al. 2005b; Springel & Hernquist 2005; Okamoto et al. 2005; Scannapieco et al. 2008), these forms of feedback can…”
• The effects of gas on morphological transformation in mergers: implications for bulge and disc demographics (2009, methodology): “…et al. (2009b) (hereafter H09), we developed a physical model to explain this behaviour, and used a large suite of hydrodynamic simulations (see Robertson et al. 2006c,b; Cox et al. 2006b,a, 2008) to show that the suppression of bulge formation in mergers of more gas-rich discs can be…”
• How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems (2007, background): “…of dissipation in galaxy merging on the BH and fundamental plane scaling relations has also been visited: Ciotti & van Albada (2001) speculated, and Robertson et al. (2006a) show, that dissipational mergers can produce the MBH-σ∗ slope and maintain the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies.”
• A general model for the CO–H2 conversion factor in galaxies with applications to the star formation law (2011, background): “The halo concentration and virial radius for a halo of a given mass are motivated by cosmological N-body simulations, and scaled to match the expected redshift-evolution following Bullock et al. (2001) and Robertson et al. (2006).”
• DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, methodology): “We derive these prescriptions from a large library of hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy encounters and mergers, described in detail in Robertson et al. (2006); Cox et al. (2006); Younger et al. (2008) and Paper I.”
• NICMOS Imaging of DRGs in the HDF-S: A Relation between Star Formation and Size at z ~ 2.5 (2006, background): “Interestingly, Robertson et al. (2006) find that the role of dissipation decreases as the mass of the merging galaxies increase.”
• An analytic model of angular momentum transport by gravitational torques: from galaxies to massive black holes (2010, unknown): “We do not present any new simulations, but instead draw on results that have been described previously in a number of papers (see e.g. Di Matteo et al. 2005; Robertson et al. 2006b; Cox et al. 2006; Younger et al. 2008; Hopkins & Quataert 2010a).”
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, background): “…at the highest redshifts may be—if merger rates are sufficiently high, there may be a large number of multiple mergers (as in Li et al. 2007), or systems may effectively be so gas-rich that merging preserves disks and operates as a means of ‘‘clumpy accretion’’ (e.g., Robertson et al. 2006a).”
• Feedback in simulations of disc-galaxy major mergers (2005, background): “…the fundamental plane (Bekki & Shioya 1997; Bekki 1998; Naab & Burkert 2003; Dantas et al. 2003; Nipoti et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2005, 2006; Robertson et al. 2006), a tight correlation between the velocity dispersion, effective radius, and luminosity, on which all ellipticals reside…”
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the relationship between galaxy properties and environment at z∼ 1 (2006, background): “…et al. 2005), and mergerinduced cold gas accretion on to central supermassive black holes can trigger energetic quasar winds which are capable of sweeping all gas from their hosts (Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005; Murray, Quataert & Thompson 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2006).”
• The SAURON project – X. The orbital anisotropy of elliptical and lenticular galaxies: revisiting the (V/σ, ɛ) diagram with integral‐field stellar kinematics (2007, background): “…gas-rich mergers, regulated by the feedback of a powerful central AGN, have been suggested to explain the scaling relations of early-type galaxies (Robertson et al.2006) and to reproduce the dichotomy (e.g. Faber et al. 2007; Cattaneoet al. 2006) in the colour distribution of galaxies as a…”
• Red mergers and the assembly of massive elliptical galaxies: the fundamental plane and its projections (2006, background): “The low angular momentum runs, however, deviate significantly from these canonical scalings (similar deviations for low angular momentum runs were also reported in Nipoti et al. 2003; BMQ; Robertson et al. 2006).”