The Validity of the Adiabatic Contraction Approximation for Dark Matter Halos

We use high resolution numerical simulations to investigate the adiabatic contraction of dark matter halos with a Hernquist density profile. We test the response of the halos to the growth of additional axisymmetric disk potentials with various central concentrations and the spherically symmetric potential of a softened point mass. Adding the potentials on timescales that are long compared to the dynamical time scale of the halo, the contracted halos have density profiles that are in excellent agreement with analytical predictions based on the conservation of the adiabatic invariant $M(r)r$. This is surprising as this quantity is strictly conserved only for particles on circular orbits and in spherically symmetric potentials. If the same potentials are added on timescales that are short compared to the dynamical timescale, the result depends strongly on the adopted potential. The adiabatic approximation still works for disk potentials. It does, however, fail for the central potential.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Added reference. Accepted for publication in ApJ

Old stellar counter-rotating components in early-type galaxies from elliptical-spiral mergers

We investigate, by means of numerical simulations, the possibility of forming counter-rotating old stellar components by major mergers between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. We show that counter-rotation can appear both in dissipative and dissipationless retrograde mergers, and it is mostly associated to the presence of a disk component, which preserves part of its initial spin. In turn, the external regions of the two interacting galaxies acquire part of the orbital angular momentum, due to the action of tidal forces exerted on each galaxy by the companion.Comment: 6 pages, 15 figures. Accepted on Astronomy & Astrophysic

2-Dimensional Kinematics of Simulated Disc Merger Remnants

We present a two-dimensional kinematic analysis for a sample of simulated binary disc merger remnants with mass ratios 1:1 and 3:1. For the progenitor discs we used pure stellar models as well as models with 10% of their mass in gas. A multitude of phenomena also observed in real galaxies are found in the simulations. These include misaligned rotation, embedded discs, gas rings, counter-rotating cores and kinematic misaligned discs. Using the 2D maps we illustrate projection effects and the change in properties of a merger remnant when gas is included in the merger. We find that kinematic peculiar subsystems are preferably formed in equal mass mergers. Equal-mass collisionless remnants can show almost no rotation, regular rotation or strong kinematic misalignment. The inclusion of gas makes the remnants appear more round(1:1) and axisymmetric(3:1). Counter-Rotating Cores (CRCs) are almost exclusively formed in equal-mass mergers with a dissipational component. 3:1 remnants show a much more regular structure. We quantify these properties by applying the kinemetric methods recently developed by Krajnovi\'c et al. This work will help to understand observations of elliptical galaxies with 2D field spectrographs, like SAURON.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS, discussion substantially enlarged, conclusion unchange

The Orbital Structure of Galaxies and Dark Matter Halos in N-Body Simulations

We examine in this work two different formation mechanism of galaxies in N-body simulations. Under the assumption that particles in a spherical dark matter halo move on circular orbits we can predict the amount of contraction of the dark matter halo during the slow formation of the disk with an adiabatic approximation. We find in N-body simulations that the adiabatic approximation is valid for all realistic mass ratios between dark matter halos and disk galaxies and that deviations from circular orbits cannot play a decisive role. In the second part we focus on the formation of ellipticals through mergers of disk galaxies. We classify the complex orbital structure in a sample of 150 collisions. The classification is correlated with shape parameters of an elliptical galaxy, such as its triaxiality or the ratios of its principal axes. We are deriving a global occupation probability for self-consistent triaxial galaxies which are in agreement with theoretical expectations. Furthermore we find that the isophotal structure of the merger remnants cannot be explained by one orbit class alone, but by a superposition of classes. The dichotomy of observed isophotal shape in boxy and disky elliptical galaxies, cannot be completely explained by the dominance of box-like, respectivley disk-like orbits in those galaxies. Current simulations cannot reproduce observed correlation between the h_3 parameter and the mean velocity. We identify a central box orbit component as the reason for this discrepancy, which are overproduce in dissipationless simulations. The z-tube component follows the correlation very well. It follows also the observed correlation between the h_3 parameter and v/sigma_0. We conclude that only one dynamical component is necessary to explain the observed correlations, which looks like a puffy disk with high velocity dispersion

SAURON's Challenge for the Major Merger Scenario of Elliptical Galaxy Formation

The intrinsic anisotropy delta and flattening epsilon of simulated merger remnants is compared with elliptical galaxies that have been observed by the SAURON collaboration, and that were analysed using axisymmetric Schwarzschild models. Collisionless binary mergers of stellar disks and disk mergers with an additional isothermal gas component, neglecting star formation cannot reproduce the observed trend delta = 0.55 epsilon (SAURON relationship). An excellent fit of the SAURON relationship for flattened ellipticals with epsilon >= 0.25 is however found for merger simulations of disks with gas fractions >= 20%, including star formation and stellar energy feedback. Massive black hole feedback does not strongly affect this result. Subsequent dry merging of merger remnants however does not generate the slowly-rotating SAURON ellipticals which are characterized by low ellipticities epsilon < 0.25 and low anisotropies. This indicates that at least some ellipticals on the red galaxy sequence did not form by binary mergers of disks or early-type galaxies. We show that stellar spheroids resulting from multiple, hierarchical mergers of star-bursting subunits in a cosmological context are in excellent agreement with the low ellipticities and anisotropies of the slowly rotating SAURON ellipticals and their observed trend of delta with epsilon. The numerical simulations indicate that the SAURON relation might be a result of strong violent relaxation and phase mixing of multiple, kinematically cold stellar subunits with the angular momentum of the system determining its location on the relation.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Ap

The flattening and the orbital structure of early-type galaxies and collisionless N-body binary disk mergers

We use oblate axisymmetric dynamical models including dark halos to determine the orbital structure of intermediate mass to massive Coma early-type galaxies. We find a large variety of orbital compositions. Averaged over all sample galaxies the unordered stellar kinetic energy in the azimuthal and the radial direction are of the same order, but they can differ by up to 40 percent in individual systems. In contrast, both for rotating and non-rotating galaxies the vertical kinetic energy is on average smaller than in the other two directions. This implies that even most of the rotating ellipticals are flattened by an anisotropy in the stellar velocity dispersions. Using three-integral axisymmetric toy models we show that flattening by stellar anisotropy maximises the entropy for a given density distribution. Collisionless disk merger remnants are radially anisotropic. The apparent lack of strong radial anisotropy in observed early-type galaxies implies that they may not have formed from mergers of disks unless the influence of dissipational processes was significant.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

Cold gas and young stars in tidally-disturbed ellipticals at z=0

We present an analysis of the neutral hydrogen and stellar populations of elliptical galaxies in the Tal et al. (2009) sample. Our aim is to test their conclusion that the continuing assembly of these galaxies at z~0 is essentially gas-free and not accompanied by significant star formation. In order to do so, we make use of HI data and line-strength indices available in the literature. We look for direct and indirect evidence of the presence of cold gas during the recent assembly of these objects and analyse its relation to galaxy morphological fine structure. We find that >25% of ellipticals contain HI at the level of M(HI)>10^8 M(Sun), and that M(HI) is of the order of a few percent of the total stellar mass. Available data are insufficient to establish whether galaxies with a disturbed stellar morphology are more likely to contain HI. However, HI interferometry reveals very disturbed gas morphology/kinematics in all but one of the detected systems, confirming the continuing assembly of many ellipticals but also showing that this is not necessarily gas-free. We also find that all very disturbed ellipticals have a single-stellar-population-equivalent age <4 Gyr. We interpret this as evidence that ~0.5-5% of their stellar mass is contained in a young population formed during the past ~1 Gyr. Overall, a large fraction of ellipticals seem to have continued their assembly over the past few Gyr in the presence of a mass of cold gas of the order of 10% of the galaxy stellar mass. This material is now observable as neutral hydrogen and young stars.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

2D velocity fields of simulated interacting disc galaxies

We investigate distortions in the velocity fields of disc galaxies and their use to reveal the dynamical state of interacting galaxies at different redshift. For that purpose, we model disc galaxies in combined N-body/hydrodynamic simulations. 2D velocity fields of the gas are extracted from these simulations which we place at different redshifts from z=0 to z=1 to investigate resolution effects on the properties of the velocity field. To quantify the structure of the velocity field we also perform a kinemetry analysis. If the galaxy is undisturbed we find that the rotation curve extracted from the 2D field agrees well with long-slit rotation curves. This is not true for interacting systems, as the kinematic axis is not well defined and does in general not coincide with the photometric axis of the system. For large (Milky way type) galaxies we find that distortions are still visible at intermediate redshifts but partly smeared out. Thus a careful analysis of the velocity field is necessary before using it for a Tully-Fisher study. For small galaxies (disc scale length ~2 kpc) even strong distortions are not visible in the velocity field at z~0.5 with currently available angular resolution. Therefore we conclude that current distant Tully-Fisher studies cannot give reliable results for low-mass systems. Additionally to these studies we confirm the power of near-infrared integral field spectrometers in combination with adaptive optics (such as SINFONI) to study velocity fields of galaxies at high redshift (z~2).Comment: 12 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in A&A, high resolution version can be found at http://astro.uibk.ac.at/~thomas/kronberger.pd