Other
Scientific paper
Sep 1999
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999dda....31.0603b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #31, #06.03
Other
Scientific paper
In the last 10 years over a dozen elliptical galaxies have been observed to posses a core which rotates counter to the rest of the galaxy. In one formation scenario, dynamical friction causes a compact companion to spiral into the center of a much larger elliptical galaxy on a retrograde orbit relative to the larger galaxy's rotation. If the core of the smaller galaxy is not tidally disrupted it may carry some of it's orbital angular momentum to the center. I present results from N-body simulations, which cover the parameter space over which satellite accretion is most likely to form counter rotating cores. The kinematic parts of the results are analyzed using the penalized likelihood method of Merritt to calculate 2D line-of-sight velocity fields, including third and fourth order Gauss-Hermite terms. By combining this method with IRAF, the photometric aspects of the results are analyzed and compared with observations. The results indicate that dissipationless satellite accretion can only form counter rotating cores when the larger galaxy's intrinsic angular momentum is almost perfectly antiparallel to the orbital angular momentum of the satellite. In most other cases a kinematically distinct core is formed. I present statistical properties of the cores, which include the deviations from pure isophote ellipses as well as deviations of the line-of-sight velocity profiles from a pure Gaussian form. To test the robustness of the results, some of the simulations are redone with a minor amount of dissipation added to the satellite. These simulations indicate that including small amounts of gas does not significantly effect the conclusions. I would like to thank the Student Stipend Committee for making this presentation possible.
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