Bibcode
Zamorano, J.; Eliche-Moral, M. C.; González-García, A. C.; Gallego, J.; Balcells, M.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Prieto, M.
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.469-469
Advertised on:
5
2013
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Recent studies have argued that galaxy mergers are not important drivers
for the evolution of S0's, on the basis that mergers cannot preserve the
coupling between the bulge and disk scale-lengths observed in these
galaxies and the lack of correlation of their ratio with the S0 Hubble
type. We investigate whether the remnants resulting from collision-less
N-body simulations of intermediate and minor mergers onto S0 galaxies
evolve fulfilling global structural relations observed in these
galaxies, or not. We show that all remnants present undisturbed S0
morphologies according to the prescriptions of specialized surveys. The
dry intermediate and minor mergers induce noticeable bulge growth
(S0clongrightarrowS0b and S0blongrightarrowS0a), but affect negligibly
to the bulge and disk scale-lengths. Therefore, if a coupling between
these two components exists prior to the merger, the encounter does not
break this coupling. This fact provides a simple explanation for the
observed lack of correlation between the bulge-to-disk scale-lengths
ratio and the S0 Hubble type. These models prove that dry intermediate
and minor mergers can induce global structural evolution within the
sequence of S0 Hubble types compatible with observations, meaning that
these processes should not be discarded from the evolutionary scenarios
of S0's just on the basis of the strong bulge-disk coupling observed in
these galaxies. This study is published in Eliche-Moral et al. (2012,
A&A, in press, arXiv:1209.0782).