Collisions and Mergers of Disk Galaxies: Hydrodynamics of Star Forming Gas

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Lamb, Susan A. Hearn, Nathan Charles
Copyright Year	2003
Abstract	We summarize the results of numerical simulations of colliding gas-rich disk galaxies in which the impact velocity is set parallel to the spin axes of the two galaxies. The effects of varying the impact speed are studied with particular attention to the resulting gaseous structures and shockwave patterns, and the time needed to produce these structures. The simulations employ an N-body treatment of the stars and dark matter, together with an SPH treatment of the gas, in which all components of the models are gravitationally active. The results indicate that for such impact geometries, collisions can lead to the very rapid formation of a central, rapidly rotating, dense gas disk, and that in all cases extensive star formation is predicted by the very high gas densities and prevalence of shocks, both in the nucleus and out in the galactic disks. As the dense nucleus is forming, gas and stars are dispersed over very large volumes, and only fall back towards the nucleus over long times. In the case of low impact velocities, this takes an order of magnitude more time than that needed for the formation of a dense nucleus.
Starting Page	185
Ending Page	188
Page Count	4
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1007/978-94-017-3315-1_34
Volume Number	284
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://cds.cern.ch/record/618042/files/0305442.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0305442v1.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3315-1_34
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article