The effects of gas on morphological transformation in mergers: implications for bulge and disc demographics
Abstract
Transformation of discs into spheroids via mergers is a well-accepted element of galaxy formation models. However, recent simulations have shown that the bulge formation is suppressed in increasingly gas-rich mergers. We investigate the global implications of these results in a cosmological framework, using independent approaches: empirical halo-occupation models (where galaxies are populated in haloes according to observations) and semi-analytic models. In both, ignoring the effects of gas in mergers leads to the overproduction of spheroids: low- and intermediate-mass galaxies are predicted to be bulge-dominated (B/T ~ 0.5 at <1010Msolar, with almost no `bulgeless' systems), even if they have avoided major mergers. Including the different physical behaviour of gas in mergers immediately leads to a dramatic change: bulge formation is suppressed in low-mass galaxies, observed to be gas-rich (giving B/T ~ 0.1 at <1010Msolar, with a number of bulgeless galaxies in good agreement with observations). Simulations and analytic models which neglect the similarity-breaking behaviour of gas have difficulty reproducing the strong observed morphology-mass relation. However, the observed dependence of gas fractions on mass, combined with suppression of bulge formation in gas-rich mergers, naturally leads to the observed trends. Discrepancies between observations and models that ignore the role of gas increase with redshift; in models that treat gas properly, galaxies are predicted to be less bulge-dominated at high redshifts, in agreement with the observations. We discuss implications for the global bulge mass density and future observational tests.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- August 2009
- DOI:
- 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.14983.x
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0901.4111
- Bibcode:
- 2009MNRAS.397..802H
- Keywords:
-
- galaxies: active;
- galaxies: evolution;
- galaxies: formation;
- galaxies: spiral;
- cosmology: theory;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRAS (matched published version). A routine to return the galaxy merger rates discussed here is available at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~phopkins/Site/mergercalc.html