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Session 22 - Disk Galaxies.
Oral session, Monday, January 13
Harbour C,
We perform fully self-consistent disk+halo+satellite N-body simulations to investigate three different dynamical responses of a disk to an infalling satellite: tilting, warping, and thickening. Our model is characterized with two cosmologically significant improvements. First, the satellites start at a distance more than three times the radius of the optical disk. This ensures a realistic interaction among the satellite, the disk, and the halo in the course of the satellite infall. Secondly, evolution of the structure and velocity ellipsoid of the disk due to internal heating is allowed. We study the commonly arising case of low density satellites in contrast to that of compact satellites considered in previous work. We find that disks are mainly tilted rather than heated by infalling satellites. Satellites of 10%, 20%, and 30% of the disk mass tilt the disk by angles of (2.9\pm 0.3)^\circ, (6.3\pm 0.1)^\circ, and (10.6\pm 0.2)^\circ. However, only 3.4%, 6.9%, and 11.1% of the orbital angular momentum is transferred to the parent galaxy. The kinetic energy associated with vertical motion in the initial coordinate frame of the disk is respectively increased by (6\pm3)%, (26\pm3)%, and (51\pm5)%, whereas the corresponding thermal energy associated with the vertical random motion in the tilted coordinate frame is only increased by (4\pm3)%, (6\pm2)%, and (10\pm2)%, respectively. The satellites cause a warp which is substantially damped over 30 disk rotations. Given our choice of initial conditions, satellites are mainly accreted to the parent halos. Satellites having up to 20% of the disk mass produce no observable thickening, whereas a satellite with 30% of the disk mass produces little observable thickening inside the half-mass radius but great damage beyond this radius. Hence, high cosmological accretion and thin disks can coexist if most infalling satellites have densities comparable to that of the parent galaxy.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: shuang@moonray.astro.utoronto.ca
