Bibcode
González-García, A. Cesar; Stanghellini, Letizia; Manchado, A.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 710, Issue 2, pp. 1589-1595 (2010).
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2010
Journal
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
We present simulations of dry-merger encounters between pairs of
elliptical galaxies with dark matter halos. The aim of these simulations
is to study the intergalactic (IG) stellar populations produced in both
parabolic and hyperbolic encounters. We model progenitor galaxies with
total-to-luminous mass ratios MT /M L= 3 and 11.
The initial mass of the colliding galaxies are chosen so that M
1/M 2 = 1 and 10. The model galaxies are populated
by particles representing stars, as in Stanghellini et al., and dark
matter. Merger remnants resulting from these encounters display a
population of unbounded particles, both dark and luminous. The number of
particles becoming unbounded depends on orbital configuration, with
hyperbolic encounters producing a larger luminous intracluster
population than parabolic encounters. Furthermore, in simulations with
identical orbital parameters, a lower MT /M L of
the colliding galaxies produces a larger fraction of unbounded luminous
particles. For each modeled collision, the fraction of unbounded to
initial stellar mass is the same in all mass bins considered, similarly
to what we found previously by modeling encounters of galaxies without
dark halos. The fraction of IG to total luminosity resulting from our
simulations is ~4% and ~6% for dark-to-bright mass ratios of 10 and 2,
respectively. These unbounded-to-total luminous fractions are down from
the 17% that we had previously found in the case of no dark halos. Our
results are in broad agreement with IG light observed in groups of
galaxies, while the results of our previous models without dark halos
better encompass observed intracluster populations. We suggest a
possible formation scenario of IG stars.
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