AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 91 Galaxy Surveys
Poster, Wednesday, January 7, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Grand Hall

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[91.06] Galactic warps induced by material accretion

J. Shen, J. A. Sellwood (Rutgers U.)

The outer regions of many edge-on disk galaxies appear noticeably warped with an integral-sign shape. The ubiquity of warps suggests that they are either long-lived or repeatedly regenerated. One of the promising methods to generate warps is by accretion of material with misaligned angular momentum (Jiang & Binney 1999). We study this process using grid-based N-body methods that allow large numbers of particles to be employed but introduce a preferred plane. We present tests that show that the grid effects are under control. Our simulations include the random motions of disk stars and explore disk-halo coupling in more detail. We pay particular attention to whether or not the resultant warps follow Briggs's rules of warp behavior.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.