Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 1992
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992aas...180.4913w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, 180th AAS Meeting, #49.13; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, p.810
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Detailed maps of the outer envelopes of most elliptical galaxies reveal faint structures termed "shells" or "ripples." Merger and infall models involving accretion from less massive companions successfully reproduce these stellar-dynamical features. However, it is likely that the sources of the shell-forming material also contain significant amounts of gas. Using a code which treats both collisionless and collisional material, we investigate the evolution of a rotating gas disk which is merged with a more massive primary in encounters that produce shells. Although the distributions of stars and gas are similar at early stages of the merger, the debris of each component is rapidly separated. Most of the gas is trapped into bound orbits at the center of the primary, where it forms a compact disk or ring depending upon the initial orbital parameters. This segregation of gas and stars has important consequences for theories of star formation in galactic encounters: While the lack of gas in the outer regions implies that star formation within the shells will be suppressed, oppositely-directed gas flows oscillating in the nucleus of the primary may stimulate star formation in those central regions. Evidence for this effect is found in recent observations of young stars in the nuclei of shell galaxies.
Hernquist Lars
Weil Melinda L.
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