Other
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21441609r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #416.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.683
Other
Scientific paper
Studies of red galaxies at high redshift have recently led to some interesting and unexpected observational conclusions. These red galaxies are uniformly smaller and denser than would be predicted by comparing to the similar population in today's universe, yet still fit the elliptical R1/4 law that defines an elliptical galaxy. This paper presents the results of two simplified models in attempting to show how the population of red, gas-poor elliptical galaxies at higher redshift (z 3) can potentially evolve into the population of red, gas-poor ellipticals in today's universe. The first of these models considers the method of adiabatic expansion, where mass lost to the gravitational potential of the galaxy allows it to relax and swell up in size. The second analyzes the method of "dry” mergers between gas-poor galaxies that allows for size growth during the merger event with very little star formation. The adiabatic expansion method is shown to be too small an effect to explain the evolution, while dry mergers require very stringent conditions to come close to matching the observational results as well. Thus it seems that neither method is fully accurately explaining the evolution, even when the two effects are combined; either a better understanding of mergers is needed or another explanation for how galaxies could expand in size is required.
Choi Phil
Kollmeier Juna
McCarthy Patrick
Roig Benjamin
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