Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

I have performed a set of hydrodynamic simulations of multiple galaxy mergers both with and without a cosmological context using Gadget. Using a set of existing simulations of binary mergers of gas-rich spiral galaxies, I found that the simulated remnants reproduce the "fast-rotators" seen by the SAURON survey in many respects. However, the origin of slowly rotating, nearly spherical galaxies seen by the SAURON survey remains mysterious. In order to discover the physical processes and merger histories that are the keys to producing slow rotators, we consider both simple, idealized initial conditions (e.g. multiple major mergers or successive minor mergers of a given mass ratio) and more complex cases where the initial conditions taken from hydrodynamic cosmological simulations. The realistic set of initial conditions take into account the cosmological context in which galaxy formation takes place, including ongoing gas infall, while the idealized initial conditions provide essential intuition for interpreting the more realistic initial conditions.