科研之友
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摘要
The class of tidal features around galaxies known as %26apos;shells%26apos; or %26apos;umbrellas%26apos; comprises debris that has arisen from high-mass-ratio mergers with low-impact parameter; the nearly radial orbits of the debris give rise to a unique morphology, a universal density profile and a tight correlation between positions and velocities of the material. As such they are accessible to analytical treatment, and can provide a relatively clean system for probing the gravitational potential of the host galaxy. In this work, we present a simple analytical model that describes the density profile, phase-space distribution, and geometry of a shell and whose parameters are directly related to physical characteristics of the interacting galaxies. The model makes three assumptions: the orbit of the interacting galaxies is radial, the potential of the host galaxy at the shell radius is spherical and the satellite galaxy%26apos;s initial velocity distribution is Maxwellian. We quantify the error introduced by the first two assumptions and show that selecting shells by their appearance on the sky is a sufficient basis to assume that these simplifications are valid. We further demonstrate that (1) given only an image of a shell, the radial gravitational force at the shell edge and the phase-space density of the satellite are jointly constrained, (2) combining the image with measurements of either point line-of-sight velocities or integrated-light spectra will yield an independent estimate of the gravitational force at a shell and (3) an independent measurement of this force is obtained for each shell observed around a given galaxy, potentially enabling a determination of the galactic mass distribution.
- 出版日期2013-10
