Globular cluster system erosion and nucleus formation in elliptical galaxies

Abstract

The radial distribution of globular clusters in galaxies is always less peaked to the centre than the halo stars'. Extending previous work to a sample of HST globular cluster systems in ellipticals, we evaluate the number of clusters lost to the galactic centre as the integrals of the difference between the observed globular cluster system distribution and the underlying halo light profile. It results that the initial populations of globular clusters were from 25% to 50% richer than now. This significant number of missing globular clusters supports the hypothesis that a large quantity of globular cluster mass in form of globular clusters decayed and destroyed has been lost to the galactic centres, where plausibly contributed to formation and feeding of a mas sive object therein. It is relevant noting that the observed correlation between the core radius of the globular cluster system and the parent galaxy luminosity can be interpreted as a result of evolution.

Latex file + 2 figures as postscript files; it needs standard MNRAS style file and epsf macro for figures. Paper submitted to MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• The Globular Cluster System in the Inner Region of M87
• Supermassive Black Holes in Early-Type Galaxies: Relationship with Radio Emission and Constraints on the Black Hole Mass Function
• M87, Globular Clusters, and Galactic Winds: Issues in Giant Galaxy Formation

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• Merging of globular clusters within inner galactic regions. II. The Nuclear Star Cluster formation
• Formation and evolution of clumpy tidal tails around globular clusters
• Globular Clusters as Tracers of Stellar Bimodality in Elliptical Galaxies: The Case of NGC 1399
• A Quantitative Link Between Globular Clusters and the Stellar Halos in Elliptical Galaxies
• Merging of globular clusters within inner galactic regions. I. Do they survive the tidal interaction?
• Globular Cluster System erosion in elliptical galaxies
• Young stellar populations in early-type dwarf galaxies; occurrence, radial extent and scaling relations
• Evolution of globular cluster systems in three galaxies of the Fornax cluster
• The spatial distribution of globular clusters in dwarf spheroidal galaxies and the timing problem
• Elliptical galaxy nuclei activity powered by infalling globular clusters