Search

We use the SAURON and GMOS integral field spectrographs to observe the active galactic nucleus (AGN) powered outflow in NGC 1266. This unusual galaxy is relatively nearby (D=30 Mpc), allowing us to investigate the process of AGN feedback in action. We present maps of the kinematics and line strengths of the ionised gas emission lines Halpha, Hbeta, [OIII], [OI], [NII] and [SII], and report on the detection of Sodium D absorption. We use these tracers to explore the structure of the source, derive the ionised and atomic gas kinematics and investigate the gas excitation and physical conditions. NGC 1266 contains two ionised gas components along most lines of sight, tracing the ongoing outflow and a component closer to the galaxy systemic, the origin of which is unclear. This gas appears to be disturbed by a nascent AGN jet. We confirm that the outflow in NGC 1266 is truly multiphase, containing radio plasma, atomic, molecular and ionised gas and X-ray emitting plasma. The outflow has velocities up to \pm900 km/s away from the systemic velocity, and is very likely to be removing significant amounts of cold gas from the galaxy. The LINER-like line-emission in NGC 1266 is extended, and likely arises from fast shocks caused by the interaction of the radio jet with the ISM. These shocks have velocities of up to 800 km/s, which match well with the observed velocity of the outflow. Sodium D equivalent width profiles are used to set constraints on the size and orientation of the outflow. The ionised gas morphology correlates with the nascent radio jets observed in 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz continuum emission, supporting the suggestion that an AGN jet is providing the energy required to drive the outflow., Comment: Contains 18 figures. Accepted to MNRAS

Observational studies have revealed a "downsizing" trend in black hole (BH) growth: the number densities of luminous AGN peak at higher redshifts than those of faint AGN. This would seem to imply that massive black holes formed before low mass black holes, in apparent contradiction to hierarchical clustering scenarios. We investigate whether this observed "downsizing" in BH growth is reproduced in a semi-analytic model for the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes, set within the hierarchical paradigm for structure formation (Somerville et al. 2008; S08). In this model, black holes evolve from light seeds (\sim100M\odot) and their growth is merger-driven. The original S08 model (baseline model) reproduces the number density of AGN at intermediate redshifts and luminosities, but underproduces luminous AGN at very high redshift (z > 3) and overproduces them at low redshift (z < 1). In addition, the baseline model underproduces low-luminosity AGN at low redshift (z < 1). To solve these problems we consider several modifications to the physical processes in the model: (1) a 'heavy' black hole seeding scenario (2) a sub-Eddington accretion rate ceiling that depends on the cold gas fraction, and (3) an additional black hole accretion mode due to disk instabilities. With these three modifications, the models can explain the observed downsizing, successfully reproduce the bolometric AGN luminosity function and simultaneously reproduce galaxy and black hole properties in the local Universe. We also perform a comparison with the observed soft and hard X-ray luminosity functions of AGN, including an empirical correction for torus-level obscuration, and reach similar conclusions. Our best-fit model suggests a scenario in which disk instabilities are the main driver for moderately luminous Seyfert galaxies at low redshift, while major mergers are the main trigger for luminous AGN., Comment: 24 pages, accepted by MNRAS for publication

There is observational evidence for inside-out growth of elliptical galaxies since $z \gtrsim 2-3$, which is not driven by in-situ star formation. Many systems at high redshift have small sizes $\sim 1kpc$ and surface brightness profiles with low Sersic indices n. The most likely descendants have, on average, grown by a factor of two in mass and a factor of four in size, indicating $r \propto M^{\alpha}$ with $\alpha \gtrsim 2$. They also have surface brightness profiles with $n \gtrsim 5$. This evolution can be qualitatively explained on the basis of two assumptions: compact ellipticals predominantly grow by collisionless minor or intermediate 'dry' mergers, and they are embedded in massive dark matter halos. We draw these conclusions from idealized collisionless mergers spheroidal galaxies - with and without dark matter - with mass ratios of 1:1, 1:5, and 1:10. The sizes evolve as $r \propto M^{\alpha}$ with $\alpha < 2$ for mass-ratios of 1:1. For minor mergers of galaxies embedded in dark matter halos, the sizes grow significantly faster and the profile shapes change more rapidly. Mergers with moderate mass-ratios of 1:5 give $\alpha \sim 2.3$ and a final Sersic index of $n = 9.5$ after doubling the stellar mass. This is accompanied by a significant increase of the dark matter fraction within the stellar half-mass radius, driven by the strong size increase probing larger, dark matter dominated regions. Only a few intermediate mass-ratio mergers of galaxies embedded in massive dark matter halos can result in the observed concurrent inside-out growth and the rapid evolution in profile shapes. Apart from negative stellar metallicity gradients such a 'minor' merger scenario also predicts significantly lower dark matter fractions for $z \sim 2$ compact quiescent galaxies and their rare present day analogues (abbreviated)., Comment: accepted for publication

We revisit collisionless major and minor mergers of spheroidal galaxies in the context of the size evolution of elliptical galaxies. The simulations are performed as a series of mergers with mass-ratios of 1:1 and 1:10 for models representing pure bulges as well as bulges embedded in dark matter halos. For major and minor mergers, respectively, we identify and analyze two different processes, violent relaxation and stripping, leading to size evolution and a change of the dark matter fraction within the observable effective radius. Violent relaxation - which is the dominant mixing process for major mergers but less important for minor mergers - scatters relatively more dark matter particles than bulge particles to small. Stripping in minor mergers assembles stellar satellite particles at large radii in halo dominated regions of the massive host. This strongly increases the size of the bulge into regions with higher dark matter fractions leaving the inner host structure almost unchanged. A factor of two mass increase by minor mergers increases the dark matter fraction by 20 per cent. We present analytic corrections to simple one-component virial estimates for the evolution of the gravitational radii. If such a two-component system grows by minor mergers alone its size growth, $r_{\mathrm{e}} \propto M^\alpha$, reaches values of $\alpha \approx 2.4$, significantly exceeding the simple theoretical limit of $\alpha = 2$. For major mergers the sizes grow with $\alpha \lesssim 1$. Our results indicate that minor mergers of galaxies embedded in massive dark matter halos provide a potential mechanism for explaining the rapid size growth and the build-up of massive elliptical systems predicting significant dark matter fractions and radially biased velocity dispersions at large radii (abbreviated), Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS

We investigate the accuracy in the recovery of the stellar dynamics of barred galaxies when using axisymmetric dynamical models. We do this by trying to recover the mass-to-light ratio (M/L) and the anisotropy of realistic galaxy simulations using the Jeans Anisotropic Multi-Gaussian Expansion (JAM) method. However, given that the biases we find are mostly due to an application of an axisymmetric modeling algorithm to a non-axisymmetric system and in particular to inaccuracies in the de-projected mass model, our results are relevant for general axisymmetric modelling methods. We run N-body collisionless simulations to build a library with various luminosity distribution, constructed to mimic real individual galaxies, with realistic anisotropy. The final result of our evolved library of simulations contains both barred and unbarred galaxies. The JAM method assumes an axisymmetric mass distribution, and we adopt a spatially constant M/L and anisotropy beta_z=1-sigma_z^2/sigma_R^2 distributions. The models are fitted to two-dimensional maps of the second velocity moments V_rms=sqrt(V^2+sigma^2) of the simulations for various viewing angles (position angle of the bar and inclination of the galaxy). We find that the inclination is generally well recovered by the JAM models, for both barred and unbarred simulations. For unbarred simulations the M/L is also accurately recovered, with negligible median bias and with a maximum one of just Delta(M/L)<1.5% when the galaxy is not too close to face on. At very low inclinations (i<30 deg) the M/L can be significantly overestimated (9% in our tests, but errors can be larger for very face-on views). For barred simulations the M/L is on average (when PA=45 deg) essentially unbiased, but we measure an over/under estimation of up to Delta(M/L)=15% in our tests. The sign of the M/L bias depends on the position angle of the bar as expected. [Abridged], Comment: 29 pages, 29 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present a new statistical method to determine the relationship between the stellar masses of galaxies and the masses of their host dark matter haloes over the entire cosmic history from z~4 to the present. This multi-epoch abundance matching (MEAM) model self-consistently takes into account that satellite galaxies first become satellites at times earlier than they are observed. We employ a redshift-dependent parameterization of the stellar-to-halo mass relation to populate haloes and subhaloes in the Millennium simulations with galaxies, requiring that the observed stellar mass functions at several redshifts be reproduced simultaneously. Using merger trees extracted from the dark matter simulations in combination with MEAM, we predict the average assembly histories of galaxies, separating into star formation within the galaxies (in-situ) and accretion of stars (ex-situ). The peak star formation efficiency decreases with redshift from 23% at z=0 to 9% at z=4 while the corresponding halo mass increases from 10^11.8M\odot to 10^12.5M\odot. The star formation rate of central galaxies peaks at a redshift which depends on halo mass; for massive haloes this peak is at early cosmic times while for low-mass galaxies the peak has not been reached yet. In haloes similar to that of the Milky-Way about half of the central stellar mass is assembled after z=0.7. In low-mass haloes, the accretion of satellites contributes little to the assembly of their central galaxies, while in massive haloes more than half of the central stellar mass is formed ex-situ with significant accretion of satellites at z<2. We find that our method implies a cosmic star formation history and an evolution of specific star formation rates which are consistent with those inferred directly. We present convenient fitting functions for stellar masses, star formation rates, and accretion rates as functions of halo mass and redshift., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, submitted to MNRAS

We study the growth of black holes (BHs) in galaxies using three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations with new implementations of the momentum mechanical feedback, and restriction of accreted elements to those that are gravitationally bound to the BH. We also include the feedback from the X-ray radiation emitted by the BH, which heats the surrounding gas in the host galaxies, and adds radial momentum to the fluid. We perform simulations of isolated galaxies and merging galaxies and test various feedback models with the new treatment of the Bondi radius criterion. We find that overall the BH growth is similar to what has been obtained by earlier workers using the Springel, Di Matteo, & Hernquist algorithms. However, the outflowing wind velocities and mechanical energy emitted by winds are considerably higher (v_w ~ 1000-3000 km/s) compared to the standard thermal feedback model (v_w ~ 50-100 km/s). While the thermal feedback model emits only 0.1 % of BH released energy in winds, the momentum feedback model emits more than 30 % of the total energy released by the BH in winds. In the momentum feedback model, the degree of fluctuation in both radiant and wind output is considerably larger than in the standard treatments. We check that the new model of the BH mass accretion agrees with analytic results for the standard Bondi problem., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, ApJ in press

We have obtained high-resolution data of the z 2 ring-like, clumpy star-forming galaxy (SFG) ZC406690 using the VLT/SINFONI with AO (in K-band) and in seeing-limited mode (in H- and J-band). Our data includes all of the main strong optical emission lines: [OII], [OIII], Ha, Hb, [NII] and [SII]. We find broad, blueshifted Ha and [OIII] emission line wings in the spectra of the galaxy's massive, star-forming clumps (sigma \sim 85 km s^-1) and even broader wings (up to 70% of the total Ha flux, with sigma \sim 290 km s^-1) in regions spatially offset from the clumps by \sim 2 kpc. The broad emission likely originates from large-scale outflows with mass outflow rates from individual clumps that are 1-8x the SFR of the clumps. Based on emission line ratio diagnostics ([NII]/Ha and [SII]/Ha) and photoionization and shock models, we find that the emission from the clumps is due to a combination of photoionization from the star-forming regions and shocks generated in the outflowing component, with 5-30% of the emission deriving from shocks. In terms of the ionization parameter (6x10^7-10^8 cm/s, based on both the SFR and the O32 ratio), density (local electron densities of 300-1800 cm^-3 in and around the clumps, and ionized gas column densities of 1200-8000 Msol/pc^2), and SFR (10-40 Msol/yr), these clumps more closely resemble nuclear starburst regions of local ULIRGs and dwarf irregulars than HII regions in local galaxies. However, the star-forming clumps are not located in the nucleus as in local starburst galaxies but instead are situated in a ring several kpc from the center of their high-redshift host galaxy, and have an overall disk-like morphology. The two brightest clumps are quite different in terms of their internal properties, energetics and relative ages, and thus we are given a glimpse at two different stages in the formation and evolution of rapidly star-forming giant clumps at high-z., Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars. It depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed. Consequently knowledge of the IMF is critical to virtually every aspect of galaxy evolution. More than half a century after the first IMF determination, no consensus has emerged on whether it is universal in different galaxies. Previous studies indicated that the IMF and the dark matter fraction in galaxy centres cannot be both universal, but they could not break the degeneracy between the two effects. Only recently indications were found that massive elliptical galaxies may not have the same IMF as our Milky Way. Here we report unambiguous evidence for a strong systematic variation of the IMF in early-type galaxies as a function of their stellar mass-to-light ratio, producing differences up to a factor of three in mass. This was inferred from detailed dynamical models of the two-dimensional stellar kinematics for the large Atlas3D representative sample of nearby early-type galaxies spanning two orders of magnitude in stellar mass. Our finding indicates that the IMF depends intimately on a galaxy's formation history., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication as a Nature Letter. More information about our Atlas3D project is available at http://purl.org/atlas3d

We present a sample of nine high resolution cosmological simulations in the mass range of M_vir=7x10^11-4x10^12 M_sun starting from LambdaCDM initial conditions. Our simulations include primordial radiative cooling, photoionization, star formation, supernova II feedback, but exclude supernova driven winds and AGN feedback. The simulated galaxies assemble in two phases, with the initial growth dominated by compact (rr_eff) resulting in an assembly redshift of z_{f,acc}~0.5-1.5 with much larger scatter. We find a positive correlation between the fraction of accreted stars and the final mass of our galaxies. We show that gravitational feedback strongly suppresses late star formation in massive galaxies contributing to the observed galaxy color bimodality. The accretion of stellar material is also responsible for the observed size growth of early-type galaxies. In addition, we find that the dark matter fractions within the stellar half-mass radii continuously increase towards lower redshift from about f_DM~0.05 at z~3 to f_DM~0.1-0.3 at z=0. Furthermore, the logarithmic slope of the total density profile is nearly isothermal at the present-day (gamma'~1.9-2.2). Finally, the input of gravitational heating lowers the central dark matter densities in the galaxies, with the effect being smaller compared to simulations without supernova feedback., Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We study the evolution of the stellar and dark matter components in a galaxy cluster of $10^{15} \, \rm{M_{\odot}}$ from $z=3$ to the present epoch using the high-resolution collisionless simulations of Ruszkowski & Springel (2009). At $z=3$ the dominant progenitor halos were populated with spherical model galaxies with and without accounting for adiabatic contraction. We apply a weighting scheme which allows us to change the relative amount of dark and stellar material assigned to each simulation particle in order to produce luminous properties which agree better with abundance matching arguments and observed bulge sizes at $z=3$. This permits the study of the effect of initial compactness on the evolution of the mass-size relation. We find that for more compact initial stellar distributions the size of the final Brightest Cluster Galaxy grows with mass according to $r\propto M^{2}$, whereas for more extended initial distributions, $r\propto M$. Our results show that collisionless mergers in a cosmological context can reduce the strength of inner dark matter cusps with changes in logarithmic slope of 0.3 to 0.5 at fixed radius. Shallow cusps such as those found recently in several strong lensing clusters thus do not necessarily conflict with CDM, but may rather reflect on the initial structure of the progenitor galaxies, which was shaped at high redshift by their formation process., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS

We study the formation of early-type galaxies (ETGs) through mergers with a sample of 70 high-resolution numerical simulations of binary mergers of disc galaxies. These simulations encompass various mass ratios, initial conditions and orbital parameters. We find that binary mergers of disc galaxies with mass ratios of 3:1 and 6:1 are nearly always classified as Fast Rotators according to the Atlas3D criterion: they preserve the structure of the input fast rotating spiral progenitors. Major disc mergers (mass ratios of 2:1 and 1:1) lead to both Fast and Slow Rotators. Most of the Slow Rotators hold a stellar Kinematically Distinct Core (KDC) in their 1-3 central kilo-parsec: these KDCs are built from the stellar components of the progenitors. The mass ratio of the progenitors is a fundamental parameter for the formation of Slow Rotators in binary mergers, but it also requires a retrograde spin for the progenitor galaxies with respect to the orbital angular momentum. The importance of the initial spin of the progenitors is also investigated in the library of galaxy mergers of the GalMer project., Comment: 4 pages; to appear on the Conference Proceedings for "Galaxy Mergers in an Evolving Universe", held in Hualien, Taiwan (October 2011)

Surveying eighteen 12CO-bright galaxies from the ATLAS3D early-type galaxy sample with the Institut de Radio Astronomie Millim\'etrique (IRAM) 30m telescope, we detect 13CO(1-0) and 13CO(2-1) in all eighteen galaxies, HCN(1-0) in 12/18 and HCO+(1-0) in 10/18. We find that the line ratios 12CO(1-0)/13CO(1-0) and 12CO(1-0)/HCN(1-0) are clearly correlated with several galaxy properties: total stellar mass, luminosity-weighted mean stellar age, molecular to atomic gas ratio, dust temperature and dust morphology. We suggest that these correlations are primarily governed by the optical depth in the 12CO lines; interacting, accreting and/or starbursting early-type galaxies have more optically thin molecular gas while those with settled dust and gas discs host optically thick molecular gas. The ranges of the integrated line intensity ratios generally overlap with those of spirals, although we note some outliers in the 12CO(1- 0)/13CO(1-0), 12CO(2-1)/13CO(2-1) and HCN/HCO+(1-0) ratios. In particular, three galaxies are found to have very low 12CO(1-0)/13CO(1-0) and 12CO(2-1)/13CO(2-1) ratios. Such low ratios may signal particularly stable molecular gas which creates stars less efficiently than 'normal' (i.e. below Schmidt-Kennicutt prediction), consistent with the low dust temperatures seen in these galaxies., Comment: MNRAS accepted

We present the Atlas3D HI survey of 166 nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs) down to M(HI)~10^7 M_sun. We detect HI in ~40% of all ETGs outside the Virgo cluster and in ~10% of all ETGs inside it. This demonstrates that it is common for non-cluster ETGs to host HI. The HI morphology varies from regular discs/rings (the majority of the detections) to unsettled gas distributions. The former are either small discs (M(HI)<10^8 M_sun) confined within the stellar body and sharing the same kinematics of the stars, or large discs/rings (M(HI) up to 5x10^9 M_sun) extending to tens of kpc from the host galaxy and frequently kinematically decoupled from the stars. Neutral hydrogen provides material for star formation in ETGs. Galaxies with central HI exhibit signatures of star formation in ~70% of the cases, ~5 times more frequently than galaxies without central HI. The central ISM is dominated by molecular gas. In ETGs with a small gas disc the conversion of HI into H_2 is as efficient as in spirals. The ETG HI mass function has M*~2x10^9 M_sun and slope=-0.7. ETGs host much less HI than spirals as a family. However, a significant fraction of them is as HI-rich as spirals. The main difference between ETGs and spirals is that the former lack the high-column-density HI typical of the bright stellar disc of the latter. We find an envelope of decreasing M(HI) with increasing environment density. The gas-richest ETGs live in the poorest environments (where star-formation is more common), galaxies in the centre of Virgo have the lowest HI content, and the cluster outskirts are a transition region. We find an HI morphology-density relation. At low environment density HI is mostly distributed on large discs/rings. More disturbed HI morphologies dominate environment densities typical of rich groups, confirming the importance of processes occurring on a galaxy-group scale for the evolution of ETGs., Comment: Accepted for publication on MNRAS

We employ hydrodynamical simulations to study the effects of dissipational gas physics on the vertical heating and thickening of disc galaxies during minor mergers. For the first time we present a suite of simulations that includes a diffuse, rotating, cooling, hot gaseous halo, as predicted by cosmological hydrodynamical simulations as well as models of galaxy formation. We study the effect of this new gaseous component on the vertical structure of a Milky Way-like stellar disc during 1:10 and 1:5 mergers. For 1:10 mergers we find no increased final thin disc scale height compared to the isolated simulation, leading to the conclusion that thin discs can be present even after a 1:10 merger if a reasonable amount of hot gas is present. The reason for this is the accretion of new cold gas, leading to the formation of a massive new thin stellar disc that dominates the surface brightness profile. In a previous study, in which we included only cold gas in the disk, we showed that the presence of cold gas decreased the thickening by a minor merger relative to the no-gas case. Here, we show that the evolution of the scale height in the presences of a cooling hot halo is dominated by the formation of the new stellar disc. In this scenario, the thick disc is the old stellar disc that has been thickened in a minor merger at z>1, while the thin disc is the new stellar disc that reforms after this merger. In addition, we study the evolution of the scale height during a 1:5 merger and find that a thin disc can be present even after this merger, provided enough hot gas is available. The final scale height in our simulations depends on the mass of the hot gaseous halo, the efficiency of the winds and the merger mass ratio. We find post-merger values in the range 0.5

We propose a simple model for the origin of fast and slow rotator early-type galaxies (ETG) within the hierarchical $\Lambda$CDM scenario, that is based on the assumption that the mass fraction of stellar discs in ETGs is a proxy for the specific angular momentum expressed via $\lambda_R$. Within our model we reproduce the fraction of fast and slow rotators as a function of magnitude in the \atl survey, assuming that fast rotating ETGs have at least 10% of their total stellar mass in a disc component. In agreement with \atl observations we find that slow rotators are predominantly galaxies with $ M_* > 10^{10.5}$ M$_{\odot}$ contributing $\sim 20%$ to the overall ETG population. We show in detail that the growth histories of fast and slow rotators are different, supporting the classification of ETGs into these two categories. Slow rotators accrete between $\sim 50% -90%$ of their stellar mass from satellites and their most massive progenitors have on average up to 3 major mergers during their evolution. Fast rotators in contrast, accrete less than 50% and have on average less than one major merger in their past. We find that the underlying physical reason for the different growth histories is the slowing down and ultimately complete shut-down of gas cooling in massive galaxies. Once cooling and associated star formation in disc stops, galaxies grow via infall from satellites. Frequent minor mergers thereby, destroy existing stellar discs via violent relaxation and also tend to lower the specific angular momentum of the main stellar body, lowering $\lambda_R$ into the slow rotator regime. Abridged..., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We make use of interferometric CO and HI observations, and optical integral-field spectroscopy to probe the origin of the molecular and ionised interstellar medium (ISM) in local early-type galaxies (ETGs). We find that 36\pm5% of our sample of fast rotating ETGs have their ionised gas kinematically misaligned with respect to the stars, setting a strong lower limit on the importance of externally acquired gas (e.g. from mergers and cold accretion). Slow rotators have a flat distribution of misalignments, indicating that the dominant source of gas is external. The molecular, ionised and atomic gas in all the detected galaxies are always kinematically aligned, even when they are misaligned from the stars, suggesting that all these three phases of the ISM share a common origin. In addition, we find that the origin of the cold and warm gas in fast-rotating ETGs is strongly affected by environment, despite the molecular gas detection rate and mass fractions being fairly independent of group/cluster membership. Galaxies in dense groups and the Virgo cluster nearly always have their molecular gas kinematically aligned with the stellar kinematics, consistent with a purely internal origin. In the field, however, kinematic misalignments between the stellar and gaseous components indicate that >46% of local fast-rotating ETGs have their gas supplied from external sources. We discuss several scenarios which could explain the environmental dichotomy, but find it difficult to simultaneously explain the kinematic misalignment difference and the constant detection rate. Furthermore, our results suggest that galaxy mass may be an important independent factor associated with the origin of the gas, with the most massive fast-rotating galaxies in our sample (M_K<-24 mag; stellar mass of >8x10^10 Msun) always having kinematically aligned gas. (abridged), Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures and 4 tables. Accepted to MNRAS

We analyze 40 cosmological re-simulations of individual massive galaxies with present-day stellar masses of $M_{*} > 6.3 \times 10^{10} M_{\odot}$ in order to investigate the physical origin of the observed strong increase in galaxy sizes and the decrease of the stellar velocity dispersions since redshift $z \approx 2$. At present 25 out of 40 galaxies are quiescent with structural parameters (sizes and velocity dispersions) in agreement with local early type galaxies. At z=2 all simulated galaxies with $M_* \gtrsim 10^{11}M_{\odot}$ (11 out of 40) at z=2 are compact with projected half-mass radii of $\approx$ 0.77 ($\pm$0.24) kpc and line-of-sight velocity dispersions within the projected half-mass radius of $\approx$ 262 ($\pm$28) kms$^{-1}$ (3 out of 11 are already quiescent). Similar to observed compact early-type galaxies at high redshift the simulated galaxies are clearly offset from the local mass-size and mass-velocity dispersion relations. Towards redshift zero the sizes increase by a factor of $\sim 5-6$, following $R_{1/2} \propto (1+z)^{\alpha}$ with $\alpha = -1.44$ for quiescent galaxies ($\alpha = -1.12$ for all galaxies). The velocity dispersions drop by about one-third since $z \approx 2$, following $\sigma_{1/2} \propto (1+z)^{\beta}$ with $\beta = 0.44$ for the quiescent galaxies ($\beta = 0.37$ for all galaxies). The simulated size and dispersion evolution is in good agreement with observations and results from the subsequent accretion and merging of stellar systems at $z\lesssim 2$ which is a natural consequence of the hierarchical structure formation. A significant number of the simulated massive galaxies (7 out of 40) experience no merger more massive than 1:4 (usually considered as major mergers). On average, the dominant accretion mode is stellar minor mergers with a mass-weighted mass-ratio of 1:5. (abridged), Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Hydrodynamic simulations of galaxies with active galactic nuclei (AGN) have typically employed feedback that is purely local: i.e., an injection of energy to the immediate neighborhood of the black hole. We perform GADGET-2 simulations of massive elliptical galaxies with an additional feedback component: an observationally calibrated X-ray radiation field which emanates from the black hole and heats gas out to large radii from the galaxy center. We find that including the heating and radiation pressure associated with this X-ray flux in our simulations enhances the effects which are commonly reported from AGN feedback. This new feedback model is twice as effective as traditional feedback at suppressing star formation, produces 3 times less star formation in the last 6 Gyr, and modestly lowers the final BH mass (30%). It is also significantly more effective than an X-ray background in reducing the number of satellite galaxies., Comment: 9 emulateapj pages, 8 figures; accepted to ApJ

The mass assembly of galaxies leaves imprints in their outskirts, such as shells and tidal tails. The frequency and properties of such fine structures depend on the main acting mechanisms - secular evolution, minor or major mergers - and on the age of the last substantial accretion event. We use this to constrain the mass assembly history of two apparently relaxed nearby Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs) selected from the Atlas-3D sample, NGC 680 and NGC 5557. Our ultra deep optical images obtained with MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope reach 29 mag/arcsec^2 in the g-band. They reveal very low-surface brightness (LSB) filamentary structures around these ellipticals. Among them, a gigantic 160 kpc long tail East of NGC 5557 hosts gas-rich star-forming objects. NGC 680 exhibits two major diffuse plumes apparently connected to extended HI tails, as well as a series of arcs and shells. Comparing the outer stellar and gaseous morphology of the two ellipticals with that predicted from models of colliding galaxies, we argue that the LSB features are tidal debris, the star-forming objects near NGC 5557, long lived Tidal Dwarf Galaxies and that each of the two ETGs was assembled during a relatively recent, major wet merger, which likely occurred at a redshift below z = 0.5. The inner kinematics of NGC 680 is typical for fast rotators which make the bulk of nearby ETGs in the Atlas-3D sample. NGC 5557 belongs to the poorly populated class of massive, round, slow rotators that are predicted by semi-analytic models and cosmological simulations to be the end-product of a complex mass accretion history, involving ancient major mergers and more recent minor mergers. Our observations suggest that under specific circumstances a single binary merger may dominate the formation history of such objects and thus that at least some massive ETGs may form at relatively low redshift (abridged)., Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, MNRAS in press

We study the formation of early-type galaxies through mergers with a sample of 70 high-resolution (softening length < 60 pc and 12*10^6 particles) numerical simulations of binary mergers of disc galaxies and 16 simulations of ETG remergers. These simulations, designed to accompany observations and models conducted within the Atlas3D project, encompass various mass ratios (from 1:1 to 6:1), initial conditions and orbital parameters. The progenitor disc galaxies are spiral-like with bulge to disc ratios typical of Sb and Sc galaxies. We find that binary mergers of disc galaxies with mass ratios of 3:1 and 6:1 are nearly always classified as Fast Rotators according to the Atlas3D criterion (based on the lambda_R parameter): they preserve the structure of the input fast rotating spiral progenitors. They have intrinsic ellipticities larger than 0.5, cover intrinsic lambda_R values between 0.2 and 0.6, within the range of observed Fast Rotators. Major disc mergers (mass ratios of 2:1 and 1:1) lead to both Fast and Slow Rotators. Most of the Fast Rotators produced in major mergers have intermediate flattening, with ellipticities between 0.4 and 0.6. Most Slow Rotators formed in these binary disc mergers hold a stellar Kinematically Distinct Core (KDC) in their 1-3 central kilo-parsec: these KDCs are built from the stellar components of the progenitors. Besides a handful of specific observed systems -- the counter-rotating discs (2-sigma galaxies) -- these therefore cannot reproduce the observed population of Slow Rotators in the nearby Universe. The mass ratio of the progenitors is a fundamental parameter for the formation of Slow Rotators in these binary mergers, but it also requires a retrograde spin for the earlier-type (Sb) progenitor galaxy with respect to the orbital angular momentum. (Abridged), Comment: Accepted for publication by MNRAS

We look at the morphology of fast and slow rotator early-type galaxies. Edge-on fast rotators are lenticular galaxies. They appear like spiral galaxies with the gas and dust removed, and in some cases are flat ellipticals with disky isophotes. Fast rotators are often barred and span the same full range of bulge fractions as spiral galaxies. The slow rotators are rounder and are generally consistent with being genuine, namely spheroidal-like, elliptical galaxies. We propose a revision to the tuning-fork diagram by Hubble as it gives a misleading description of ETGs. We study for the first time the kinematic morphology-density T-Sigma relation using fast and slow rotators to replace lenticulars and ellipticals. We find that our relation is cleaner than using classic morphology. Slow rotators are nearly absent at the lowest density environments [f(SR)<2%] and generally constitute a small fraction [f(SR)~4%] of the total galaxy population in the environments explored by our survey, with the exception of the densest core of the Virgo cluster [f(SR)~20%]. We find a clean log-linear relation between the fraction f(Sp) of spiral galaxies and the local galaxy surface density. The existence of a smooth kinematic T-Sigma relation in the field excludes processes related to the cluster environment as main contributors to the apparent conversion of spirals into fast-rotators in low-density environments. It shows that the segregation is driven by local effects at the small-group scale. Only at the largest densities in the Virgo core does the f(Sp) relation break down and steepens sharply, while the fraction of slow-rotators starts to significantly increase. This suggests that a different mechanism is at work there. (Abridged), Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS on 24 February 2011

We report the discovery of a powerful molecular wind from the nucleus of the non-interacting nearby S0 field galaxy NGC 1266. The single-dish CO profile exhibits emission to +/- 400 km/s and requires a nested Gaussian fit to be properly described. Interferometric observations reveal a massive, centrally- concentrated molecular component with a mass of 1.1x10^9 Msuns and a molecular outflow with a molecular mass of 2.4x10^7 Msuns. The molecular gas close to the systemic velocity consists of a rotating, compact nucleus with a mass of about 4.1x108 Msuns within a radius of approximately 60 pc. This compact molecular nucleus has a surface density of \approx 2.7 \times 10^4 Msuns/pc^2, more than two orders of magnitude larger than that of giant molecular clouds in the disk of the Milky Way, and it appears to sit on the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation despite its extreme kinematics and energetic activity. We interpret this nucleus as a disk that confines the outflowing wind. A mass outflow rate of 13 Msuns/yr leads to a depletion timescale of about 85 Myr. The star formation in NGC 1266 is insufficient to drive the outflow, and thus it is likely driven by the active galactic nucleus (AGN). The concentration of the majority of the molecular gas in the central 100 pc requires an extraordinary loss of angular momentum, but no obvious companion or interacting galaxy is present to enable the transfer. NGC 1266 is the first known outflowing molecular system that does not show any evidence of a recent interaction., Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, ApJ accepted

Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations as well as observations indicate that spiral galaxies are comprised of five different components: dark matter halo, stellar disc, stellar bulge, gaseous disc and gaseous halo. While the first four components have been extensively considered in numerical simulations of binary galaxy mergers, the effect of a hot gaseous halo has usually been neglected even though it can contain up to 80% of the total gas within the galaxy virial radius. We present a series of hydrodynamic simulations of major mergers of disc galaxies, that for the first time include a diffuse, rotating, hot gaseous halo. Through cooling and accretion, the hot halo can dissipate and refuel the cold gas disc before and after a merger. This cold gas can subsequently form stars, thus impacting the morphology and kinematics of the remnant. Simulations of isolated systems with total mass M~10^12Msun show a nearly constant star formation rate of ~5Msun/yr if the hot gaseous halo is included, while the star formation rate declines exponentially if it is neglected. We conduct a detailed study of the star formation efficiency during mergers and find that the presence of a hot gaseous halo reduces the starburst efficiency (e=0.5) compared to simulations without a hot halo (e=0.68). Moreover we find cases where the stellar mass of the merger remnant is lower than the sum of the stellar mass of the two progenitor galaxies when evolved in isolation. This suggests a revision to semi-analytic galaxy formation models which assume that a merger always leads to enhanced star formation. We show that adding the hot gas component has a significant effect on the kinematics and internal structure of the merger remnants, like an increased abundance of fast rotators and an r^(1/4) surface brightness profile at small scales., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables, submitted to MNRAS

The fragmentation of shocked flows in a thermally bistable medium provides a natural mechanism to form turbulent cold clouds as precursors to molecular clouds. Yet because of the large density and temperature differences and the range of dynamical scales involved, following this process with numerical simulations is challenging. We compare two-dimensional simulations of flow-driven cloud formation without self-gravity, using the Lagrangian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code VINE and the Eulerian grid code Proteus. Results are qualitatively similar for both methods, yet the variable spatial resolution of the SPH method leads to smaller fragments and thinner filaments, rendering the overall morphologies different. Thermal and hydro-dynamical instabilities lead to rapid cooling and fragmentation into cold clumps with temperatures below 300K. For clumps more massive than 1 Msun/pc, the clump mass function has an average slope of -0.8. The internal velocity dispersion of the clumps is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than their relative motion, rendering it subsonic with respect to the internal sound speed of the clumps, but supersonic as seen by an external observer. For the SPH simulations most of the cold gas resides at temperatures below 100K, while the grid-based models show an additional, substantial component between 100 and 300K. Independently of the numerical method our models confirm that converging flows of warm neutral gas fragment rapidly and form high-density, low-temperature clumps as possible seeds for star formation., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, MNRAS accepted

We demonstrate here using both single-dish and interferometric observations that CO molecules are an excellent kinematic tracer, even in high-mass galaxies, allowing us to investigate for the first time the CO Tully-Fisher relation of early-type galaxies. We compare the Tully-Fisher relations produced using both single-dish and interferometric data and various inclination estimation methods, and evaluate the use of the velocity profile shape as a criterion for selecting galaxies in which the molecular gas extends beyond the peak of the rotation curve. We show that the gradient and zero-point of the best-fit relations are robust, independent of the velocity measure and inclination used, and agree with those of relations derived using stellar kinematics. We also show that the early-type CO Tully-Fisher (CO-TF) relation is offset from the CO-TF of spirals by 0.98 \pm 0.22 magnitude at Ks-band, in line with other results. The intrinsic scatter of the relation is found to be \approx 0.4 magnitudes, similar to the level found in the spiral galaxy population. Next generation facilities such as the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) should allow this technique to be used in higher-redshift systems, providing a simple new tool to trace the mass-to-light ratio evolution of the most massive galaxies over cosmic time., Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepted

We provide a census of the apparent stellar angular momentum within 1 Re of a volume-limited sample of 260 early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the nearby Universe, using integral-field spectroscopy obtained in the course of the ATLAS3D project. We exploit the LambdaR parameter to characterise the existence of two families of ETGs: Slow Rotators which exhibit complex stellar velocity fields and often include stellar kinematically Distinct Cores (KDCs), and Fast Rotators which have regular velocity fields. Our complete sample of 260 ETGs leads to a new criterion to disentangle Fast and Slow Rotators which now includes a dependency on the apparent ellipticity (Epsilon). It separates the two classes significantly better than the previous prescription, and than a criterion based on V/Sigma: Slow Rotators and Fast Rotators have LambdaR lower and larger than kFSxSQRT(Epsilon), respectively, where kFS=0.31 for measurements made within 1 Re. We show that the vast majority of early-type galaxies are Fast Rotators: these have regular stellar rotation, with aligned photometric and kinematic axes (Paper II, Krajnovic et al. 2011}, include discs and often bars and represent 86% (224/260) of all early-type galaxies in the volume-limited ATLAS3D sample. Fast Rotators span the full range of apparent ellipticities from 0 to 0.85, and we suggest that they cover intrinsic ellipticities from about 0.35 to 0.85, the most flattened having morphologies consistent with spiral galaxies. Only a small fraction of ETGs are Slow Rotators representing 14% (36/260) of the ATLAS3D sample of ETGs. Of all Slow Rotators, 11% (4/36) exhibit two counter-rotating stellar disc-like components and are rather low mass objects (Mdyn<10^10.5 M_Sun). All other Slow Rotators (32/36) appear relatively round on the sky (Epsilon_e<0.4), tend to be massive (Mdyn>10^10.5 M_Sun), and often (17/32) exhibit KDCs., Comment: 28 pages, 23 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. High resolution version can be found on http://purl.com/atlas3d

We have carried out a survey for 12CO J=1-0 and J=2-1 emission in the 260 early-type galaxies of the volume-limited Atlas3D sample, with the goal of connecting their star formation and assembly histories to their cold gas content. This is the largest volume-limited CO survey of its kind and is the first to include many Virgo Cluster members. Sample members are dynamically hot galaxies with a median stellar mass 3\times 10^{10} Msun; they are selected by morphology rather than colour, and the bulk of them lie on the red sequence. The overall CO detection rate is 56/259 = 0.22 \error 0.03, with no dependence on K luminosity and only a modest dependence on dynamical mass. There are a dozen CO detections among the Virgo Cluster members; statistical analysis of their H_2 mass distributions and their dynamical status within the cluster shows that the cluster's influence on their molecular masses is subtle at best, even though (unlike spirals) they seem to be virialized within the cluster. We suggest that the cluster members have retained their molecular gas through several Gyr residences in the cluster. There are also a few extremely CO-rich early-type galaxies with H_2 masses >= 10^9 Msun, and these are in low density environments. We do find a significant trend between molecular content and the stellar specific angular momentum. The galaxies of low angular momentum also have low CO detection rates, suggesting that their formation processes were more effective at destroying molecular gas or preventing its re-accretion. We speculate on the implications of these data for the formation of various sub-classes of early-type galaxies., Comment: Fixed typo in author list. 33 pages. MNRAS, accepted

[Abridged] We use the ATLAS3D sample of 260 early-type galaxies (ETGs) to study the apparent kinematic misalignment angle, Psi, defined as the angle between the photometric and kinematic major axis. We find that 71% of nearby ETGs are strictly aligned systems (Psi > 5 deg), an additional 14% have 5 < Psi < 10 deg and 90% of galaxies have Psi < 15 deg. Taking into account measurement uncertainties, 90% of galaxies can be considered aligned to better than 5 deg, suggesting that only a small fraction of early-type galaxies (~10%) are not consistent with axisymmetry within the projected half-light radius. We identify morphological features such as bars and rings (30%), dust structures (16%), blue nuclear colours (6%) and evidence of interactions (8%). We use kinemetry to analyse the mean velocity maps and separate galaxies in two broad types of regular and non-regular rotators. We find 82% of regular rotators and 17% non-regular rotators, with 2 galaxies that we were not able to classify due to data quality. The non-regular rotators are typically found in dense regions and are massive. The majority of galaxies do not have any specific kinemetric features, but we highlight here the frequency of the kinematically distinct cores (7%) and the aligned double peaks in the velocity dispersion maps (4%). Most of the galaxies that are misaligned have complex kinematics and are non-regular rotators. While the trends are weak, there is a tendency that large values of Psi are found in galaxies at intermediate environmental densities and among the most massive galaxies in the sample. We suggest that the most common formation mechanism for ETGs preserves the axisymmetry of the disk progenitors. Less commonly, the formation process results in a triaxial galaxy with much lower net angular momentum., Comment: 30 pages, 17 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Higher resolution version can be found on http://purl.com/atlas3d

We reexamine the age distribution of star clusters in the Antennae in the context of N-body+hydrodynamical simulations of these interacting galaxies. All of the simulations that account for the observed morphology and other properties of the Antennae have star formation rates that vary relatively slowly with time, by factors of only 1.3 - 2.5 in the past 10^8 yr. In contrast, the observed age distribution of the clusters declines approximately as a power law, dN/dt \propto t^{gamma} with gamma = -1.0, for ages 10^6 yr \la t \la 10^9 yr. These two facts can only be reconciled if the clusters are disrupted progressively for at least 10^8 yr and possibly 10^9 yr. When we combine the simulated formation rates with a power-law model, f_surv \propto t^{delta}, for the fraction of clusters that survive to each age t, we match the observed age distribution with exponents in the range -0.9 \la delta \la -0.6 (with a slightly different delta for each simulation). The similarity between delta and gamma indicates that dN/dt is shaped mainly by the disruption of clusters rather than variations in their formation rate. Thus, the situation in the interacting Antennae resembles that in relatively quiescent galaxies such as the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, including revisions after referee report

The Atlas3D project is a multi-wavelength survey combined with a theoretical modeling effort. The observations span from the radio to the millimeter and optical, and provide multi-colour imaging, two-dimensional kinematics of the atomic (HI), molecular (CO) and ionized gas (Hbeta, [OIII] and [NI]), together with the kinematics and population of the stars (Hbeta, Fe5015 and Mgb), for a carefully selected, volume-limited (1.16*10^5 Mpc^3) sample of 260 early-type (elliptical E and lenticular S0) galaxies (ETGs). The models include semi-analytic, N-body binary mergers and cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Here we present the science goals for the project and introduce the galaxy sample and the selection criteria. The sample consists of nearby (D<42 Mpc) morphologically-selected ETGs extracted from a parent sample of 871 galaxies (8% E, 22% S0 and 70% spirals) brighter than M_K<-21.5 mag (stellar mass M_Star>6*10^9 M_Sun). We analyze possible selection biases and we conclude that the parent sample is essentially complete and statistically representative of the nearby galaxy population. We present the size-luminosity relation for the spirals and ETGs and show that the ETGs in the Atlas3D sample define a tight red sequence in a colour-magnitude diagram, with few objects in the transition from the blue cloud. We describe the strategy of the SAURON integral-field observations and the extraction of the stellar kinematics with the pPXF method. We give an overview of the characteristics of the other main datasets already available for our sample and of the ongoing modelling projects., Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Many observed massive star-forming z\approx2 galaxies are large disks that exhibit irregular morphologies, with \sim1kpc, \sim10^(8-10)Msun clumps. We present the largest sample to date of high-resolution cosmological SPH simulations that zoom-in on the formation of individual M*\sim10^(10.5)Msun galaxies in \sim10^(12)Msun halos at z\approx2. Our code includes strong stellar feedback parameterized as momentum-driven galactic winds. This model reproduces many characteristic features of this observed class of galaxies, such as their clumpy morphologies, smooth and monotonic velocity gradients, high gas fractions (f_g\sim50%) and high specific star-formation rates (\gtrsim1Gyr^(-1)). In accord with recent models, giant clumps (Mclump\sim(5x10^8-10^9)Msun) form in-situ via gravitational instabilities. However, the galactic winds are critical for their subsequent evolution. The giant clumps we obtain are short-lived and are disrupted by wind-driven mass loss. They do not virialise or migrate to the galaxy centers as suggested in recent work neglecting strong winds. By phenomenologically implementing the winds that are observed from high-redshift galaxies and in particular from individual clumps, our simulations reproduce well new observational constraints on clump kinematics and clump ages. In particular, the observation that older clumps appear closer to their galaxy centers is reproduced in our simulations, as a result of inside-out formation of the disks rather than inward clump migration., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

Cosmological simulations of galaxy formation appear to show a two-phase character with a rapid early phase at z>2 during which in-situ stars are formed within the galaxy from infalling cold gas followed by an extended phase since z<3 during which ex-situ stars are primarily accreted. In the latter phase massive systems grow considerably in mass and radius by accretion of smaller satellite stellar systems formed at quite early times (z>3) outside of the virial radius of the forming central galaxy. These tentative conclusions are obtained from high resolution re-simulations of 39 individual galaxies in a full cosmological context with present-day virial halo masses ranging from 7e11 M_sun h^-1 < M_vir < 2.7e13 M_sun h^-1 and central galaxy masses between 4.5e10 M_sun h^-1 < M_* < 3.6e11 M_sun h^-1. The simulations include the effects of a uniform UV background, radiative cooling, star formation and energetic feedback from SNII. The importance of stellar accretion increases with galaxy mass and towards lower redshift. In our simulations lower mass galaxies ($M_* < 9e10 M_sun h^-1) accrete about 60 per cent of their present-day stellar mass. High mass galaxy ($M_* > 1.7e11 M_sun h^-1) assembly is dominated by accretion and merging with about 80 per cent of the stars added by the present-day. In general the simulated galaxies approximately double their mass since z=1. For massive systems this mass growth is not accompanied by significant star formation. The majority of the in-situ created stars is formed at z>2, primarily out of cold gas flows. We recover the observational result of archaeological downsizing, where the most massive galaxies harbor the oldest stars. We find that this is not in contradiction with hierarchical structure formation. Most stars in the massive galaxies are formed early on in smaller structures, the galaxies themselves are assembled late., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We study the structural evolution of turbulent molecular clouds under the influence of ionizing radiation emitted from a nearby massive star by performing a high resolution parameter study with the iVINE code. The temperature is taken to be 10K or 100K, the mean number density is either 100cm^3 or 300cm^3. Besides, the turbulence is varied between Mach 1.5 and Mach 12.5 and the main driving scale between 1pc and 8pc. We vary the ionizing flux by an order of magnitude. In our simulations the ionizing radiation enhances the initial turbulent density distribution and thus leads to the formation of pillar-like structures observed adjacent to HII regions in a natural way. Gravitational collapse occurs regularly at the tips of the structures. We find a clear correlation between the initial state of the turbulent cold cloud and the final morphology and physical properties of the structures formed. The most favorable regime for the formation of pillars is Mach 4-10. Structures and therefore stars only form if the initial density contrast between the high density unionized gas and the gas that is going to be ionized is lower than the temperature contrast between the hot and the cold gas. The density of the resulting pillars is determined by a pressure equilibrium between the hot and the cold gas. A thorough analysis of the simulations shows that the complex kinematical and geometrical structure of the formed elongated filaments reflects that of observed pillars to an impressive level of detail. In addition, we find that the observed line-of sight velocities allow for a distinct determination of different formation mechanisms. Comparing the current simulations to previous results and recent observations we conclude that e.g. the pillars of creation in M16 formed by the mechanism proposed here and not by the radiation driven implosion of pre-existing clumps., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We study the growth of dark matter halos in the concordance LCDM cosmology using several N-body simulations of large cosmological volumes. We build merger trees from the Millennium and Millennium-II simulations, covering a range 10^9-10^15 Msun in halo mass and 1-10^5 in merger mass ratio. Our algorithm takes special care of halo fragmentation and ensures that the mass contribution of each merger to halo growth is only counted once. This way the integrated merger rate converges and we can consistently determine the contribution of mergers of different mass ratios to halo growth. We find that all resolved mergers, up to mass ratios of 10^5, contribute only ~60% of the total halo mass growth, while major mergers are subdominant, e.g. mergers with mass ratios smaller than 3:1 (10:1) contribute only ~20% (~30%). This is verified with an analysis of two additional simulation boxes, where we follow all particles individually throughout cosmic time. Our results are also robust against using several halo definitions. Under the assumption that the power-law behaviour of the merger rate at large mass ratios can be extrapolated to arbitrarily large mass ratios, it is found that, independently of halo mass, ~40% of the mass in halos comes from genuinely smooth accretion of dark matter that was never bound in smaller halos. We discuss possible implications of our findings for galaxy formation. One implication, assuming as is standard that the pristine intergalactic medium is heated and photoionized by UV photons, is that all halos accrete >40% of their baryons in smooth "cold" T>~10^4K gas, rather than as warm, enriched or clumpy gas or as stars., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

We present a new high-resolution N-body/SPH simulation of an encounter of two gas-rich disk galaxies which closely matches the morphology and kinematics of the interacting Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/39). The simulation includes radiative cooling, star formation and feedback from SNII. The large-scale morphology and kinematics are determined by the internal structure and the orbit of the progenitor disks. The properties of the central region, in particular the starburst in the overlap region, only match the observations for a very short time interval of ~20 Myr after the second encounter. This indicates that the Antennae galaxies are in a special phase only about 40 Myr after the second encounter and 50 Myr before their final collision. This is the only phase in the simulation when a gas-rich overlap region between the nuclei is forming accompanied by enhanced star formation. The star formation rate as well as the recent star formation history in the central region agree well with observational estimates. For the first time this new model explains the distributed extra-nuclear star formation in the Antennae galaxies as a consequence of the recent second encounter. The proposed model predicts that the Antennae are in a later merger stage than the Mice (NGC 4676) and would therefore lose their first place in the classical Toomre sequence., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJL

We study the evolution of black holes (BHs) on the M_BH-sigma and M_BH-M_bulge planes as a function of time in disk galaxies undergoing mergers. We begin the simulations with the progenitor black hole masses being initially below (Delta log M_BH=-2), on (Delta log M_BH=0) and above (Delta log M_BH=0.5) the observed local relations. The final relations are rapidly established after the final coalescense of the galaxies and their BHs. Progenitors with low initial gas fractions (f_gas=0.2) starting below the relations evolve onto the relations (Delta log M_BH=-0.18), progenitors on the relations stay there (Delta log M_BH=0) and finally progenitors above the relations evolve towards the relations, but still remaining above them (Delta log M_BH=0.35). Mergers in which the progenitors have high initial gas fractions (f_gas=0.8) evolve above the relations in all cases (Delta log M_BH=0.5). We find that the initial gas fraction is the prime source of scatter in the observed relations, dominating over the scatter arising from the evolutionary stage of the merger remnants. The fact that BHs starting above the relations do not evolve onto the relations, indicates that our simulations rule out the scenario in which overmassive BHs evolve onto the relations through gas-rich mergers. By implication our simulations thus disfavor the picture in which supermassive BHs develop significantly before their parent bulges., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted to ApJL (minor revisions to match accepted version)

The disruptive effect of galactic tides is a textbook example of gravitational dynamics. However, depending on the shape of the potential, tides can also become fully compressive. When that is the case, they might trigger or strengthen the formation of galactic substructures (star clusters, tidal dwarf galaxies), instead of destroying them. We perform N-body simulations of interacting galaxies to quantify this effect. We demonstrate that tidal compression occurs repeatedly during a galaxy merger, independently of the specific choice of parameterization. With a model tailored to the Antennae galaxies, we show that the distribution of compressive tides matches the locations and timescales of observed substructures. After extending our study to a broad range of parameters, we conclude that neither the importance of the compressive tides (~15% of the stellar mass) nor their duration (~ 10 Myr) are strongly affected by changes in the progenitors' configurations and orbits. Moreover, we show that individual clumps of matter can enter compressive regions several times in the course of a simulation. We speculate that this may spawn multiple star formation episodes in some star clusters, through e.g., enhanced gas retention., Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We find that the amount and nature of the assumed ionizing background can strongly affect galaxy formation and evolution. Galaxy evolution simulations typically incorporate an ultraviolet background which falls off rapidly above z=3; e.g., that of Haardt & Madau (1996). However, this decline may be too steep to fit the WMAP constraints on electron scattering optical depth or observations of intermediate redshift (z ~ 2-4) Ly-alpha forest transmission. As an alternative, we present simulations of the cosmological formation of individual galaxies with UV backgrounds that decline more slowly at high redshift: both a simple intensity rescaling and the background recently derived by Faucher-Giguere (2009), which softens the spectrum at higher redshifts. We also test an approximation of the X-ray background with a similar z-dependence. We find for the test galaxies that an increase in either the intensity or hardness of ionizing radiation generically pushes star formation towards lower redshifts: although overall star formation in the simulation boxes is reduced by 10-25%, the galaxies show a factor of ~2 increase in the fraction of stars within a 30 kpc radius that are formed after z=1. Other effects include late gas inflows enhanced up to 30 times, stellar half-mass radii decreased by up to 30%, central velocity dispersions increased up to 40%, and a strong reduction in substructure. The magnitude of the effects depends on the environmental/accretion properties of the particular galaxy., Comment: 10 emulateapj pages, 10 figures; accepted by ApJ

We study the effect of dissipational gas physics on the vertical heating and thickening of disc galaxies during minor mergers. We produce a suite of minor merger simulations for Milky Way-like galaxies. This suite consists of collisionless simulations as well as hydrodynamical runs including a gaseous component in the galactic disc. We find that in dissipationless simulations minor mergers cause the scale height of the disc to increase by up to a factor of ~2. When the presence of gas in the disc is taken into account this thickening is reduced by 25% (50%) for an initial disc gas fraction of 20% (40%), leading to a final scale height z0 between 0.6 and 0.7 kpc, regardless of the initial scale height. We argue that the presence of gas reduces disc heating via two mechanisms: absorption of kinetic impact energy by the gas and/or formation of a new thin stellar disc that can cause heated stars to recontract towards the disc plane. We show that in our simulations most of the gas is consumed during the merger and thus the regrowth of a new thin disc has a negligible impact on the z0 of the post merger galaxy. Final disc scale heights found in our simulations are in good agreement with studies of the vertical structure of spiral galaxies where the majority of the systems are found to have scale heights of 0.4 kpc < z0 < 0.8 kpc. We also found no tension between recent measurements of the scale height of the Milky Way thin disc and results coming from our hydrodynamical simulations. We conclude that the existence of a thin disc in the Milky Way and in external galaxies is not in obvious conflict with the predictions of the CDM model., Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, two additional simulations, discussion enlarged, two figures added, updated references, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We use a statistical approach to determine the relationship between the stellar masses of galaxies and the masses of the dark matter halos in which they reside. We obtain a parameterized stellar-to-halo mass (SHM) relation by populating halos and subhalos in an N-body simulation with galaxies and requiring that the observed stellar mass function be reproduced. We find good agreement with constraints from galaxy-galaxy lensing and predictions of semi-analytic models. Using this mapping, and the positions of the halos and subhalos obtained from the simulation, we find that our model predictions for the galaxy two-point correlation function (CF) as a function of stellar mass are in excellent agreement with the observed clustering properties in the SDSS at z=0. We show that the clustering data do not provide additional strong constraints on the SHM function and conclude that our model can therefore predict clustering as a function of stellar mass. We compute the conditional mass function, which yields the average number of galaxies with stellar masses in the range [m, m+dm] that reside in a halo of mass M. We study the redshift dependence of the SHM relation and show that, for low mass halos, the SHM ratio is lower at higher redshift. The derived SHM relation is used to predict the stellar mass dependent galaxy CF and bias at high redshift. Our model predicts that not only are massive galaxies more biased than low mass ones at all redshifts, but the bias increases more rapidly with increasing redshift for massive galaxies than for low mass ones. We present convenient fitting functions for the SHM relation as a function of redshift, the conditional mass function, and the bias as a function of stellar mass and redshift., Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, discussion enlarged, one more figure, updated references, accepted for publication in ApJ

We study the thermal formation history of four simulated galaxies that were shown in Naab et al. (2007) to reproduce a number of observed properties of elliptical galaxies. The temperature of the gas in the galaxies is steadily increasing with decreasing redshift, although much of the gas has a cooling time shorter than the Hubble time. The gas is being heated and kept hot by gravitational heating processes through the release of potential energy from infalling stellar clumps. The energy is dissipated in supersonic collisions of infalling gas lumps with the ambient gas and through the dynamical capturing of satellite systems causing gravitational wakes that transfer energy to the surrounding gas. Furthermore dynamical friction from the infalling clumps pushes out dark matter, lowering the central dark matter density by up to a factor of two from z=3 to z=0. In galaxies in which the late formation history (z<2) is dominated by minor merging and accretion the energy released (E~5x10^{59} ergs) from gravitational feedback is sufficient to form red and dead elliptical galaxies by z~1 even in the absence of supernova and AGN feedback., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted to ApJL (minor revisions to match accepted version)

Using a high resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulation of the formation of a massive spheroidal galaxy we show that elliptical galaxies can be very compact and massive at high redshift in agreement with recent observations. Accretion of stripped in-falling stellar material increases the size of the system with time and the central concentration is reduced by dynamical friction of the surviving stellar cores. In a specific case of a spheroidal galaxy with a final stellar mass of $1.5 \times 10^{11} M_{\odot}$ we find that the effective radius $r_e$ increases from $0.7 \pm 0.2 \rm kpc$ at z = 3 to $r_e = 2.4 \pm 0.4 \rm kpc$ at z = 0 with a concomitant decrease in the effective density of an order of magnitude and a decrease of the central velocity dispersion by approximately 20% over this time interval. A simple argument based on the virial theorem shows that during the accretion of weakly bound material (minor mergers) the radius can increase as the square of the mass in contrast to the usual linear rate of increase for major mergers. By undergoing minor mergers compact high redshift spheroids can evolve into present-day systems with sizes and concentrations similar to observed local ellipticals. This indicates that minor mergers may be the main driver for the late evolution of sizes and densities of early-type galaxies., Comment: accepted to ApJ Letters

We present high resolution simulations on the impact of ionizing radiation of massive O-stars on the surrounding turbulent interstellar medium (ISM). The simulations are performed with the newly developed software iVINE which combines ionization with smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and gravitational forces. We show that radiation from hot stars penetrates the ISM, efficiently heats cold low density gas and amplifies over-densities seeded by the initial turbulence. The formation of observed pillar-like structures in star forming regions (e.g. in M16) can be explained by this scenario. At the tip of the pillars gravitational collapse can be induced, eventually leading to the formation of low mass stars. Detailed analysis of the evolution of the turbulent spectra shows that UV-radiation of O-stars indeed provides an excellent mechanism to sustain and even drive turbulence in the parental molecular cloud., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters