Predicting the Properties of the Remnants of Dissipative Galaxy Mergers

Abstract

We construct a physically motivated model for predicting the properties of the remnants of gaseous galaxy mergers, given the properties of the progenitors and the orbit. The model is calibrated using a large suite of SPH merger simulations. It implements generalized energy conservation while accounting for dissipative energy losses and star formation. The dissipative effects are evaluated from the initial gas fractions and from the orbital parameters via an "impulse" parameter, which characterizes the strength of the encounter. Given the progenitor properties, the model predicts the remnant stellar mass, half-mass radius, and velocity dispersion to an accuracy of 25%. The model is valid for both major and minor mergers. We provide an explicit recipe for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation.

14 pages, 9 figures. MNRAS accepted

References in corpus (6)

• The effect of galaxy mass ratio on merger--driven starbursts
• Sunrise: Polychromatic Dust Radiative Transfer in Arbitrary Geometries
• A Revised Model for the Formation of Disk Galaxies: Low Spin and Dark-Halo Expansion
• The influence of gas on the structure of merger remnants
• The importance of dry and wet merging on the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies
• The Dissipative Merger Progenitors of Elliptical Galaxies

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• The new semianalytic code GalICS 2.0 - Reproducing the galaxy stellar mass function and the Tully-Fisher relation simultaneously
• The Role of Dissipation in the Scaling Relations of Cosmological Merger Remnants
• Modeling the Ages and Metallicities of Early-Type Galaxies in Fundamental Plane Space
• The $z\lesssim 1$ drop of cosmic dust abundance in a semi-analytic framework
• The Physical Origin of the Mass-Size Relation and Its Scatter of Disk Galaxies
• The Size Evolution of Elliptical Galaxies
• The weak dependence of velocity dispersion on disk fractions, mass-to-light ratio and redshift: Implications for galaxy and black hole evolution
• The relationship between galaxy and halo sizes in the Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulations
• Size-Mass Relation Shows Its Colours: Contrasting Physical Imprints of Galaxy Evolution in Rest-Frame UV and Optical