Characterizing Disk Truncations with N-Body Simulations

Details Characterizing Disk Truncations with N-Body Simulations Characterizing Disk Truncations with N-Body Simulations

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...20921106r&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #211.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,

Mathematics

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Scientific paper

Disks of spiral galaxies often exhibit a two-slope exponential profile with a sharp 'break' between the inner and outer profile. In most cases, the outer profile is steeper (truncated), but in some the opposite is also observed (anti-truncated), while still others do not reveal a break at all. Several theories attempting to explain the phenomenon of disk breaks have been proposed, ranging from star formation thresholds to bar-driven secular evolution, but most can only account for one piece of observational evidence while neglecting others. We investigate this problem via high resolution N-body simulations. First, we seek to understand the parameter space of collisionless isolated systems dependance of truncations on resonant interactions between bar, disk, and halo, variations in Toomre-Q parameter, and perturbations by massive satellites are considered. In addition to collisionless models, we construct SPH models to investigate the importance of threshold gas surface densities for disk truncation. Ultimately, we will use the results from these isolated models to understand the evolution of galaxies spawned from cosmologically-motivated initial conditions. Preliminary results provide evidence for the previously-established notion that angular momentum transport leads to the formation of disk breaks. Our collisionless models also reveal a clear kinematic signature of the break, while the SPH models do not such kinematic signatures could therefore provide an observable diagnostic for distinguishing between different break-forming mechanisms.

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