2005/01/18 by M. C. Eliche‐Moral, M. C. Eliche-Moral, M. Balcells +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0501376
LaTeX, 13 pages, 6 figures, gzipped tar file. Proceeding of the Joint European and National Astronomical Meeting, "The Many Scales in the Universe", held in Granada, Spain, 2004
arxiv created 2005/01/18 · openalex publication_date 2005/01/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
For bulges of spiral galaxies, the concentration, or Sersic index, increases with bulge luminosity and bulge-to-disk ratio B/D (Andredakis, Peletier, & Balcells 1995, MNRAS, 275, 874). Does this trend trace the growth of bulges via satellite accretion? And, is satellite infall consistent with this trend? Aguerri, Balcells, & Peletier (2001, A&A, 367, 428) investigated this question with N-body simulations of the accretion of dense, spheroidal satellites. Here, we expand on that work by running N-body simulations of the accretion of satellites that have realistic densities. Satellites are modelled as disk-bulge structures with their own dark-matter halo. A realistic density scaling with the primary galaxy is ensured by using the Tully-Fisher relation. Our merger models show that most satellites disrupt before reaching the center. However, a bulge-disk decomposition of the surface density profile after the accretion shows an increase of both the B/D and the Sersic index n of the bulge. The increase in the mass and concentration of the inner Sersic component is due to inward piling up of disk material due to transient bars during the satellite orbital decay. This research is described in Eliche-Moral, Balcells, Aguerri, & Gonzalez-Garcia, 2005 (in preparation).