2001/06/22 by M. Balcells, Balcells, M.
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Statistical Methods and Models #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0106411
6 pages, 3 figures. Contributed paper to "The Central kpc of Starbursts and AGN: the La Palma connection'', Eds. J.H. Knapen, J.E. Beckman, I. Shlosman and T.J. Mahoney, ASP conf. series, in press (2001)
arxiv created 2001/06/22 · openalex publication_date 2001/06/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the innermost regions of bulges with surface brightness data derived from combined HST/NICMOS and ground-based NIR profiles. Bulge profiles to 1-2 kpc may be fit with Sersic laws, and show a trend with bulge-to-disk ratio: low-B/D bulges are roughly exponential, whereas higher-B/D bulges show increasing Sersic shape index n, indicating higher peak central densities and more extended brightness tails. N-body models of accretion of satellites onto disk-bulge-halo galaxies show that satellite accretion contributes to the increase of the shape index n as the bulge grows by accretion. The N-body results demonstrate that exponential profiles are fragile to merging, hence bulges with exponential surface brightness profiles cannot have experienced significant growth by accretion of dense satellites.