Date:
Thu, 28/01/201012:15-13:15
Location:
Kaplun Bldg, seminar room, 2nd floor
The Dynamical Imprint of Elliptical Galaxy Formation through Mergers
Since the violent relaxation in hierarchical mergers is incomplete, the distribution functions of galaxies contain a wealth of information about their formation pathways. Recent advances in integral field spectroscopy, multi-slit infrared spectroscopy, and dynamical modeling techniques have greatly improved our ability to harvest this information. There is a large body of evidence that gas-rich mergers play an important role in elliptical galaxy formation. I will discuss the physically intuitive orbital structure
predicted by SPH (Gadget-2) simulations of dissipative mergers, and its tantalizing resemblance to dynamical models of some observed ellipticals. The merger model predicts a sharp kinematic transition between ~1 and 3 effective radii, highlighting the importance of large-radius spectroscopic observations in constraining galaxy formation models.
Since the violent relaxation in hierarchical mergers is incomplete, the distribution functions of galaxies contain a wealth of information about their formation pathways. Recent advances in integral field spectroscopy, multi-slit infrared spectroscopy, and dynamical modeling techniques have greatly improved our ability to harvest this information. There is a large body of evidence that gas-rich mergers play an important role in elliptical galaxy formation. I will discuss the physically intuitive orbital structure
predicted by SPH (Gadget-2) simulations of dissipative mergers, and its tantalizing resemblance to dynamical models of some observed ellipticals. The merger model predicts a sharp kinematic transition between ~1 and 3 effective radii, highlighting the importance of large-radius spectroscopic observations in constraining galaxy formation models.