Bibcode
Tapia, T.; Balcells, M.; González-García, A. C.; Trujillo, I.; Oñorbe, J.; Domínguez-Tenreiro, R.
Bibliographical reference
Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VII, Proceedings of the X Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), held in Valencia, July 9 - 13, 2012, Eds.: J.C. Guirado, L.M. Lara, V. Quilis, and J. Gorgas., pp.418-423
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5
2013
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
Massive galaxies have grown a factor of 4 in size since z=2 to the
present. The reasons of this growth remain unclear. Within the possible
mechanisms that have been suggested to explain this evolution, the
accretion of satellites by the massive galaxies seems to be the most
promising one. To understand the details of this growth we have
performed a suite of 8 N-body simulations in which merger times, mass
ratios and orbital parameters were extracted from self-consistent
cosmological simulations and reproduced in high-resolution, prepared
mergers. Our simulations show that accretion of satellites is able to
produce a growth in size by a factor of ˜4-6 and a growth in mass
by a factor of ˜ 2; the growth in size occurs because satellite
material is deposited in the outer part of the main galaxy. Thus,
cosmological motivated dry minor mergers are sufficient to explain the
size evolution of the massive elliptical galaxies.