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Simulations of Gas Clouds in Interacting Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Magnus Thomasson
Magnus Thomasson*
Affiliation:
Onsala Space Observatory, S-439 00 Onsala, Sweden

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A companion can induce a varitey of morphological changes in a galaxy. I use N-body simulations to study the effects of different kinds of perturbations on the dynamics of a disk galaxy. The model is two-dimensional, with a disk consisting of about 60,000 particles. Most of the particles (80 %) represent the old stellar population with a high velocity dispersion, while the rest (20 %) represent gas clouds with a low velocity dispersion. Initially, the velocity dispersion corresponds to Q = 1 for the “star” particles, and Q = 0 for the “gas” particles, where Q is Toomre’s (1964) stability parameter. The gas clouds can collide inelastically. The disk is stabilized by a rigid halo potential, and by the random motions of the old “star” particles. To simulate the effect of an encounter on the disk, a companion galaxy, modelled as a point mass, can move in a co-planar orbit around the disk. A complete description of the N-body code is found in Thomasson (1989).

Type
IX. Theory of Interaction Stimulated Effects
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 124: Paired and Interacting Galaxies , 1990 , pp. 749 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © NASA 1990

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