paper

Radial orbital anisotropy and the Fundamental Plane of elliptical galaxies

arXiv:astro-ph/0201402 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05356.x

Abstract

The existence of the Fundamental Plane (FP) imposes strong constraints on the structure and dynamics of elliptical galaxies, and thus contains important information on the processes of their formation and evolution. Here we focus on the relations between the FP thinness and tilt and the amount of radial orbital anisotropy. By using N-body simulations of galaxy models characterized by observationally motivated density profiles, and also allowing for the presence of live, massive dark matter halos, we explore the impact of radial orbital anisotropy and instability on the FP properties. The numerical results confirm a previous semi--analytical finding: the requirement of stability matches almost exactly the thinness of the FP. In other words, galaxy models that are radially anisotropic enough to be found outside the observed FP (with their isotropic parent models lying on the FP) are unstable, and their end--products fall back on the FP itself. We also find that a systematic increase of radial orbit anisotropy with galaxy luminosity cannot explain by itself the whole tilt of the FP, becoming the galaxy models unstable at moderately high luminosities: at variance with the previous case their end--products are found well outside the FP itself (abridged).

30 pages, 6 figures, MNRAS (accepted)

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