Bibcode
Balcells, Marc; Quinn, Peter J.
Bibliographical reference
(Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Summer School on Evolutionary Phenomena in Galaxies, Puerto de la Cruz, Spain, July 4-15, 1988) Astrophysics and Space Science (ISSN 0004-640X), vol. 156, no. 1-2, June 1989, p. 133-140.
Advertised on:
6
1989
Citations
6
Refereed citations
5
Description
The dynamics of mergers between two unequal elliptical systems was
studied with self-consistent numerical simulations. Comparisons of these
models to real ellipticals are made in a variety of properties, which
include the mean central surface brightness, the shape of the surface
brightness profile, and the type of rotation curve and dispersion
profile. Several proofs are given that the cores of smaller, denser
ellipticals sink to the remnant's center virtually undisturbed, and
create a core-within-a-core structure with definite signatures in the
surface brightness profile and the velocity dispersion profile.
Ellipticals with anomalous cores appear to be a natural outcome of this
type of merger.