U NIVERSIDAD DE A NTIOQUIA

FACULTAD DE C IENCIAS E XACTAS Y NATURALES

I NSTITUTO DE F ÍSICA

M AESTR ÍA EN F ÍSICA

2013

Evolution of Disk Galaxies in ΛCDM

by,
Luis Fernando Quiroga Peláez

Advisor
Prof. Juan Carlos Muñoz Cuartas
.
 Abstract
We present in this work the results of the study of the evolution of disk galaxies in a
cosmological context. We used the merger trees of three dark matter halos candidates
to Milky May type halos selected from a set of cosmological simulations tuned to form
a Local Group at redshift zero (CLUES project). For each candidate we reproduced the
three minor mergers that more affect its dynamics. Inside of each dark matter halo we
build a disk according to its properties and we analyzed the influence in the evolution
and survival of the minor mergers over that disk. We found that minor mergers with a
satellite-to-host mass ratio less than 16% leads to disks that survive because the transfer
of lineal momentum and angular momentum to the disk in this mergers is low. We also
saw that the final state of the disk depends on the initial orientation of its, an orientation
initial of the disk where its angular momentum is parallel to the halo angular momentum
minimizes the destructive power of the satellites.
we also developed a method to find the galactic disk in collisionless simulations. This
method uses the stars kinematic to define their particles membership to the disk. This
method is able to find the disk in galaxies with and without bulge and in systems in
mergers processes. Additionally, we used numerical galaxies and analytical results to
build classification curves to estimate the bulge-to-total mass ratio of the galaxy, this
curves would be used by the observers because are build with observables quantities as
z-velocity dispersion σz (R) and the surface density of mass Σ(R).
.
 Acknowledgements
Especial Thanks to Juan Carlos Munoz for his constant advice not only in academic
subjects but in many other aspects needed for my training as a professional. To my parents
and my family by their support during this time, to Maria for your company and patience.
To my friends Mario and Noreña, Sorayda, Pino, Nacho, Anyeres and all that battled
beside me during this Masters.
I also thank to Grupo de Fı́sica y Astrofı́sica Computacional (FACom) for their sup-
port and formation opportunities, To the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP)
for lending its facilities and resources to run simulations. This work was funded in part by
the Comite para el Desarrollo de la Investigacion (CODI) and the Patrinomio Autónomo
Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento para la Ciencia, la Tecnologıa y la Innovacion, Fran-
cisco Jose de Caldas.
CLUES simulations were ran at LRZ Munich. Analysis and part of the simulations
presented in this work were ran in JUROPA at Jülich Supercomputing Centre and in the
clusters of the Leibniz-Institut Fúr Astrophysik Potsdam.
.
Contents

1 Introduction 13

2 Theoretical Framework 17
2.1 Distribution of Matter in Galaxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Collisions of Stellar Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3 Mergers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.1 Encounters between Spherical Galaxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.2 Encounters of Rotating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.3 Encounters with Flattened Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.4 Dynamical Friction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5 Encounters at Hight Velocities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6 Observational Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3 Finding Disk in Simulations 39

3.1 Method to Find Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2.1 Selected Disks in Isolated Galaxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2.2 Implementation in Galaxies Interacting with Satellites . . . . . . 50
3.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4 Disk Galaxies in ΛCDM 53

4.1 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1.1 Initial Conditions for our Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2 Our Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3 Disk Structure Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.4 Effects that Could Favor Disk Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.4.1 The Initial Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.4.2 Mass Ratio Satellite-Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

5 Bulge to Disk Mass Ratio 79

5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2 Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

7
8 CONTENTS

5.3 Results and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

5.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

6 Conclusions 87
List of Figures

2.1 Galactic components, taken from https://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect20/A2a.html0. 19

2.2 Tidal tails in interacting galaxies, taken from http://abyss.uoregon.edu/js/lectures/cannibalism/cann
2.3 Contours of equal effective potential for two point masses, the L-points
are the Lagrange points, the tidal radius is the cross of contours close to
L3 [Binney 1987] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 criteria for merging in the L̂-Ê plane[Binney 1987]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5 top: The box and loop orbits. Stars at randomly chosen phases on the
orbits to give a visual impression of the density distribution in the orbit.
bottom: Elliptical galaxy with shells NGC 3923. [Binney 2008]. . . . . . 27
2.6 Disk with spin and orbital angular momentum anti-parallel [Toomre 1972]. 28
2.7 Disk with spin and orbital angular momentum parallel [Toomre 1972]. . . 29
2.8 Density profiles NFW and Hernquist. Both profiles are similar only in
their internal region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.9 Aceleration ratios between NFW and Herquist, the effect of the dynamical
friction is not the same over the satellite. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.10 Examples of interacting galaxies. All Images come from the galery of
pictures of the web site of the Hubble Space Telescope. . . . . . . . . . . 37

3.1 z-component of angular momentum as a function of the total energy for

particles of a disk, The blue line shows the the maximum z-component
(Jzmax ) in each interval of energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.2 Distributions of the circular parameter for a disk and a disk with bulge. . . 42
3.3 Ilustrative picture about threshold angle α used in the criteria 1. . . . . . . 42
3.4 left: cold disk selected with criteria 1, right: Hot disk selected with crite-
ria 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5 left: cold disk selected with criteria 2, right: Hot disk selected with crite-
ria 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.6 Initial stellar component (top) and after 2Gyr of evolution (bottom) for
the isolated galaxy with views: edge-on in XZ plane (left), face-on in XY
plane (center), and bulge XY plane (right) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

9
10 LIST OF FIGURES

3.7 Histogram of the circularity parameter for an isolated disk in the time,
the histogram shows that the galaxy is essentially a disk in the time, this
is an evidence of the dependable of the algorithm to generate the initial
conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.8 (left) Initial stellar component, (center) disk selected and (right) bulge
selected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.9 Histogram of the circularity parameter for an isolated disk in the time,
the histogram shows that the galaxy is essentially a disk in the time, this
is an evidence of the dependable of the algorithm to generate the initial
conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.10 (left) Initial stellar component, (center) disk selected and (right) bulge
selected for a galaxy with a bulge of 40% of the disk mass. . . . . . . . . 50
3.11 (left) distribution of the circularity parameter for a disk with bulge (solid
line), the dashed lines are the histograms for the components after sep-
aration. (right) distribution for a galaxy with bulge and interacting with
satellite galaxies, the peak in zero are particles from satellites with strange
orbits respect to the galactic disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.12 (left) Initial stellar component in interaction, (center) disk selected and
(right) bulge selected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4.1 One of three candidates to Local Universe from CLUES. Image extracted
from http://www.clues-project.org/images/darkmatter. . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Example of a merger tree found with FOF algorithm ([Sanes 2010]). . . . 56
4.3 Virial radius for the three candidates to Milky Way, through all the evolu-
tion of the halo size is quiet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.4 Virial mass for the three candidates to Milky Way, only one of the candi-
dates increases its mass significantly between z ∼ 1.8 and z ∼ 1. . . . . . 57
4.5 Spin parameter of the halo, alterations in this quantity are produced by
minor mergers; then, strong changes in the rotation of the halo mark the
most representative minor mergers in the evolution of the galaxy. . . . . . 58
4.6 Unstable disk generated with a distribution of dark matter type NFW. . . . 59
4.7 Example of a disk (red points) at the origin and three satellites (black
points) fall in it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.8 Disk angular momentum parallel (L ~ disk ) to z-axis (blue vector), the disk
will rotate such that L ~ disk coincides with an arbitrary vector L.~ . . . . . . 61
4.9 Disk angular momentum parallel (L ~ disk ) to z-axis (blue vector), the disk
will rotate such that L ~ disk coincides with an arbitrary vector L.~ . . . . . . 61
4.10 Projection on XY and XZ planes for the final disk in the two orientations
for the same galactic system. (left) orientation 1 and (right) orientation 2. 62
4.11 Stable isolated disk, (left) projection on XZ-plane, (right) projection on
XY-plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.12 (top-left) The distribution of the circularity parameter for isolated disk,
(top-right) is the surface density profile in the time, (bottom-left) velocity
dispersion, and Toomre parameter in (bottom-right). . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
LIST OF FIGURES 11

4.13 Distance of each satellite respect to the center of the disk in the time, to
the left is the pass of the satellites for the orientation oh and orientation
os (right). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.14 Projection on XY and XZ planes for the final disk in the two orientations
for the same galactic system. (left) orientation oh and (right) orientation os. 72
4.15 Circularity parameter for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right). . . 73
4.16 Velocity dispersion for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right). . . . 73
4.17 Surface density profile for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right). . . 74
4.18 Toomre paramter for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right). . . . . . 74
4.19 (left) Disk survival view XZ-XY, (right) Disk not survival XZ-XY. . . . . 75
4.20 Velocity dispersion for a disk that survives (left) and does not survive (right) 75
4.21 Surface density profiles for a disk that survives (left) and doesn’t survive
(right) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.22 Toomre parameter for a disk that survives (left) and doesn’t survive (right) 76

5.1 Maximum inclination of stars orbits as a function of B/T. Larger B/T pro-
duces smaller inclinations of the orbits for galactic disks with the same
mass but with different bulge mass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.2 Inclination of a star for a galaxy seen edge-on. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.3 Maximum z-velocity as a function of σz . Clearly żmax is directly propor-
tional to σz and independent of B/T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.4 The vertical frequency of the disk vs. the mass surface density, the effect
of B/T is stronger for outer radii of the galaxies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.5 σz /(RΣ) vs. σz /Σ, where σz (R) and Σ(R) are calculated for radial bins.
Each color corresponds to galaxies with different B/T (= 0.05, 0.2 and
0.4), for each value of B/T we build the curve for three galaxies with
different masses (curves of the same color). Through observational mea-
sures of the z-velocity dispersion and surface density for radii close to the
length scale of the disk is possible, via classification curves, to determine
B/T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
12 LIST OF FIGURES
Chapter 1
Introduction

Current observations suggest that to date the Universe is composed mainly by 70% of dark
energy, 25% of dark matter and 4% of ordinary matter that interacts with light (baryons).
Evolution and dynamics of each of these components in the time is well know. In the most
accepted cosmological model (ΛCDM) the Universe is expanding and the dark matter
is considered cold. At cosmological scales the dark energy dominates its dynamics, at
smaller scales (less than ∼ 100Mpc) the gravitational interaction govern the dynamics in
regions where the dark matter has high densities, at smallest scales, baryons evolve under
the action of gravitational fields, radiative processes, chemical enrichment and many other
physical and astrophysical processes [Benson 2010].
Any cosmological model aimed to describe the evolution and matter distribution in the
Universe; it must be able to account for the main characteristics like its matter distribu-
tion and dynamics to date. In ΛCDM, the currently observed structures of matter are the
result of a hierarchical process of structures formation, where the primitive over-densities
accreted dark matter particles via gravitational attraction to form even bigger matter over
densities called dark matter halos. The baryionic matter is trapped by these over den-
sities and falls in the gravitational halos potential well. In this process it is supposed
that angular momentum is conserved, thereby the baryonic material clouds get angular
momentum from its orbital angular momentum and then get a net rotation; additionally,
while gas clouds fall they cool and form stars. The final result is a dark matter halo with
an axis-symmetric structure in its center of gas and stars called galactic disk. This is what
defines a disk galaxy. homever, there are galaxies where the gas and stars form a structure
with spheroidal symmetry with almost zero net rotation speed, they define what we call
elliptical galaxies.
The halos and therefore the galaxies, are gravitationally attracted to each other, when they
are close a merger could happen, if the mass of the galaxies are comparable it produces a
major merger that usually destroy both galaxies forming a new one; otherwise, if a galaxy
is very much massive than other a minor merger happens and the small galaxy is swal-
lowed by the large one while modifies its structure. Thereby, each galactic components:
gas, dust (particles with sizes more than ∼ 100µm), stars and dark matter will change
their distribution and dynamics via interactions with other galaxies.
Then, in this cosmological context, galaxies suffer constant collisions between them lead-

13
14 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

ing to their evolution and to the galaxy zoo observed by astronomers at different epochs
of the Universe. This hierarchical model of structures formation has been very successful
to reproduce the distribution of matter in the observed universe with its main character-
istics; however, still there are several open problems, one of these are the formation of
disk galaxies with their complex morphology and most important, how a disk galaxy like
Milky Way (MW) has survived to date?.
To study the evolution of disk galaxies in the universe it is necessary to use observations
and simulations because timescales of galactic evolution is too large compared with hu-
mans timescales. Then observations show us time snapshots of galaxies are possible to es-
timate matter distributions, chemical populations, kinematic properties, etc. Meanwhile,
simulations are used to study the temporal evolution of galactic systems in “real” time ab
initio which results are in agreement with observations. In both cases exit the problem
of mixing, that is the difficulty to detect completely which stars or particles belong to
the galactic disk or to another galactic components, additionally each component through
internal dynamical processes or mergers is changing of mass in the time [Fisher 2009],
[Abadi 2003]. To decompose the galactic components it is common to use kinetically and
dynamical criteria, it is also very common to use fitted model to the surface brightness of
the galaxies [Sérsic 1963]), [Abadi 2003], [Scannapieco 2009],[Fisher 2009], [Oohama 2009],
[Maller 2006], [Yoshino 2008].
Once the galactic components are detected by some method, it is possible to make detailed
studies of aspects like structural characteristics, matter distributions, chemical evolution,
dynamics, and so on. For example, we are interested in understanding the shapes and be-
havior of disk galaxies today at their cosmological context. Several previous works have
made progress in this topic using observations or cosmological simulations of portions of
universe with dark matter and/or gas, here we mention some of these advances.
On [Kazantzidis 2008] reproduced the larger minor mergers suffered by a disk, the minor
mergers were extracted from a cosmological simulation, and the disk is numerically tuned
to be stable from z = 2 to z = 0; have found that structures like rings, warps, disk vertical
growth, and thin-thick disk decomposition as those ones observed at MW can be obtained
in hight resolution N-body simulations of dark matter and stars. [Scannapieco 2009] used
high resolution hydrodynamical simulations to resimulate eight MW type halos selected
by its spin parameter and fusion history, to reproduce the formation and evolution of the
galactic disk. They observed that none of their galaxies hold their disk until the present
due to the major mergers and instabilities that also produced structural characteristics
into the disk and bulge, their disk do not agree very well with current observations.
[Martig 2012] took halos with similar mass to that of the MW in environments of low
density (isolated galaxies), they studied the morphological evolution of the galaxy as a
function of the redshift. They found no correlation between the disk morphologies in
z = 1 and z = 0, the correlation was found on disk morphologies in z = 0.5 and z = 0.
There are other additional works like [Hammer 2011] who used observations to suggest
that mergers between gas-rich galaxies can produce new disks as large as M31 disk and
that could survive until z = 0. [Qu 2011] used N-body simulations to show the impor-
tance of the minor mergers in the kinematics of young and old stars in disk galaxies.
[Purcell 2011] made simulations of the merger of the MW with a satellite, in this simu-
lations the galaxy forms spiral arms and outer rings and strongly influences the central
 15

bar. Finally [Xu 2012] found that major mergers are not responsible for the formation of
elliptical galaxies with mass less than 1010.1 M .
Regarding the central region of disk galaxies, there are results and problems that the model
should explain. In the galactic zoo there are galaxies with classical bulges with spherical
symmetry produced in major mergers, boxy/peanut bulges are believed to be the result
of vertical resonances and buckling instabilities in bars and pseudobulges from secular
evolution of disk by gas inflow in the internal regions of the galaxy [Weinzirl 2009].
Photometric and kinematic properties define each type of bulge, but in some galaxies
these properties are mixed in their bulges implying that this can be the product of different
formation mechanisms. Seeking to understand the formation of disk galaxies within a
ΛCDM paradigm, to link the properties of the bulge with the morphological properties of
the disk in the Hubble sequence could provide clues about galactic evolution process and
the formation of the bulge [Martinet ], [Noguchi 1999], [Maller 2006], [Yoshino 2008],
[Fisher 2009], [Oohama 2009], [Weinzirl 2009].
In present day, to study bulges, the most common is to use methods to find the bulge-total
mass ratio (B/T) through fitting to the luminosity profile of the bulge to a Sérsic type and
through the assumption of a mass-luminosity relation M/L for the bulge and disk get
B/T for the galaxy [Fisher 2009], [Weinzirl 2009]. The methods based on the above idea
might not be very accurate inasmuch as the luminosity profile of the bulge behaves like
Sérsic type, also the results can be affected by the stellar extinction, central point sources
like AGN’s, the inclination of the galaxies and the presence of a central bar.
In this thesis we develop some methods used to study the evolution and survival of disk
galaxies in a universe ΛCDM and apply them to study the survival of a MW like galaxy at
redshift z < 2. In Chapter 2 we study the main theoretical results about our knowledge of
the internal dynamics of the galaxies and their response to the collision with other galax-
ies. In Chapter 3 we show a method to detect disk in simulations of galaxies composed
only of stars and dark matter. In Chapter 4 we present our method to study the evolution
and survival of disk galaxies in a cosmological context and their application to the study
of Milky Way type galaxies. In Chapter 5 we draw a new method for calculate bulge-disk
the mass ratio B/T via classification curves, finally in Chapter 6 we give some conclusions
of our work.
16 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 2
Theoretical Framework

In this chapter we present an overview to the concepts and results that will be helpful
for proposing numerical experiments and analytical procedures as well as to discuss their
consequences. In Section 2.1 we mention the results of observations and simulations
used to determine the baryon and dark matter distribution in galaxies. In 2.2 we define
the collision of a stellar system and its main effects on the stellar orbits. Galactic mergers
are explained in 2.3 and the fall of satellite galaxies to larger galaxies in 2.4. Section 2.5
is about galactic encounters at hight velocities and some examples of interacting galaxies
from observations are shown in 2.6.

Introduction
Galaxies are composed mainly by gas, dust, stars and dark matter. The spatial distribu-
tion and dynamics are studied using observations and computer simulations; with both
methods it has become evident that interacting galaxies evolve very different from those
in isolation. Mergers of Galaxies of comparable sizes and masses (major mergers) usually
destroy the parent galaxies and form new systems with different matter distributions and
dynamics, but when the interacting galaxies are not comparable in mass (minor merger)
basically the larger galaxy is heated up and its structure and dynamics can be slightly
modified by the small galaxy. In the following we summarize the main features and ef-
fects from this merger processes that are essential for the goals of this work.

2.1 Distribution of Matter in Galaxies

Observations of galaxies and numerical simulations have been used to determine the mat-
ter distribution in galaxies with well-defined shapes and symmetries. Now, we review the
main properties of this distribution.

17
18 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Distribution of Baryonic Components

The baryonic matter is subatomic particles made up of three quarks. Baryons belong to
the hadron family, which are the quark-based particles, for that reason, baryons participate
a strong interaction. The most familiar baryons are the protons and neutrons that make up
most of the mass of the visible matter in the universe. In galaxies this matter is mainly in
gas, dust and stars form; hence, the distribution of baryonic matter is determined through
light distribution using photometric and spectroscopic techniques. As a result there are
two types of well known luminosity distributions: disk and spheroids distributions, each
to be briefly described below. Once it is obtained the brightness profile of galaxies, mass
distribution is obtained using a mass-luminosity relation, this relation is established by the
fact that the larger the mass producing light, the brighter the galaxy will be (see equation
2.1), this mass M is often estimated under the assumption of the dynamics of a virialized
system. In terms of the solar mass M and luminosity L the mass-luminosity relation is
[Binney 1987].
 γ
L M
= , (2.1)
L M
Then, for each galaxy are computes its total mass and luminosity profile with dynamics
and observations respectively; thereby the constant γ is obtained and the mass distribution
for the galaxy is determined.

Elliptical Galaxies
Elliptical galaxies are star spherical distributions contained in a dark matter halo. Accord-
ing to observations those galaxies own very small amounts of cold gas and dust at least
compared to disk galaxies. To date only elliptical galaxies with magnitudes in B between
−8 to −23, masses from 107 M to 1014 M , and diameters ranging from tens to thou-
sands of kpc have been detected. However, it is believed that smaller elliptical galaxies
may exist, but they are too faint to be spotted with the current observational facilities.
To find the mass distribution of elliptical galaxies it is used the same procedure as sketched
before. The brightness distribution is traced with curves of equal brightness called isophotes,
this distribution isophotes are modeled on ellipses whose intensity decrease with the ra-
dius, usually according to the de Vaucouleurs or R1/4 -law’s
1/4 −1]
I(r) = Ie 10[−3.33(r/re ) , (2.2)
where re is the effective radius at which the galaxy emits the half of its total brightness
and Ie is the brightness at that radius. However not all the elliptical galaxies are fitted to
this brightness profile, a general form inspired by 2.2 is
1/n −1]
I(r) = Ie 10[−bn (r/re ) , (2.3)
the values of n are fitted to the data and bn is such that the definition of Re is satisfied.
Another commonly used brightness profile used is the Hubble-Oemler law (equation 2.4)
where I0 is the central brightness, r0 is the radius at which I0 is constant. In this profile,
for r < rt the surface brightness changes as I(r) ∝ r−2 , for r > rt the surface brightness
2.1. DISTRIBUTION OF MATTER IN GALAXIES 19

profile decays very quickly and predicts a finite total luminosity. In the limit rt −→ ∞
this one reduces to the Hubble-Reynolds law 2.5
2 2
I0 e−r /rt
I(r) = . (2.4)
(1 + r0 )2
I0
I(r) = . (2.5)
(1 + r0 )2
Thereby, with any of the above profiles (the one that most agree with the galaxy) and using
the mass-luminosity relation 2.1, the mass distribution is obtained and the morphological
properties can be determined.

Disk Galaxies
A disk galaxy is a flattened axis-symmetrical distribution of matter contained inside a
spheroidal dark matter halo. According to observations, disk galaxies usually have three
basic components, namely: the disk and two spherical components stellar halo and bulge
(see Figure 2.1). These galaxies have sizes ranging from 5 to 100kpc with total masses be-
tween 109 M and 1012 M and absolute magnitudes from −16 to −23. There are several
types of disk galaxies in function of the bulge-disk brightness ratio, spiral arms geome-
try and the definition of the observed disk, but we only address the distribution of basic
components in disk galaxies that is relevant to our work.

Figure 2.1: Galactic components, taken from https://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect20/A2a.html0.

The presence of dust hinders to determine the brightness distribution for the disk in most
visible spectral bands, to avoid this, the observations are made with images in near in-
frared. Van der Kruit and Searle ([Kruit 1981a],[Kruit 1981b] & [Searle 1971]) fitted the
disk surface brightness distribution to

j(R, z) = j0 Σ(R)λ(z), (2.6)

20 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Where R and z are in cylindrical coordinates; j0 is a normalization constant, Σ(R) =

e−R/Rd is the surface brightness distribution for a face-on disk, and λ(z) = sech2 (z/2z0 )
is the vertical brightness distribution for a face-edge disk, where Rd and z0 are the radial
and vertical scale length respectively. Also [Wainscoat 1989] and [Freeman 1970] fitted
data to the function with the two orthogonal distributions

j(R, z) = j0 e−R/Rd e−|z|/z0 , (2.7)

Motivated by this surface brightness distributions and using the mass-luminosity relation,
the volumetric density profile for an symmetric-axis mass distribution Md like infinitely
thin disks is given by
 
Md −R/h 2 z
ρ(R, z) = 2
e sech , (2.8)
4πRd z0 z0
where h and z0 are the radial scale length and vertical scale length for the disk respec-
tively. This distribution is valid for stars, gas and dust located in flattened systems. For the
spherical components like the stellar halo and the bulge distributions with such spherically
symmetric distributions are used. For the bulge it is common to use the Sérsic brightness
distribution 2.9 [Sérsic 1963], where re is the scale length and Ie is the brightness in re , bn
is a constant relating Ie and re ; n is the Sérsic index, each n value leads to different distri-
butions consistent with the observations; for example, n = 4 is the R1/4 -law mentioned
above, n = 1 is the exponential distribution for disk, and for elliptical galaxies n ranging
from 1.5 and 20. Although it not general the classic bulges (spherical bulges) have Sérsic
index larger than 2, and n lower than 2 corresponds to pseudo bulges (bulges with bars,
nuclear ring or nuclear spiral).
1/n −1]
I(r) = Ie e−bn [(r/a) , (2.9)
Although the stellar halo is very faint, counts of the numbers of stars indicate that this
component satisfy the spherical distributions here mentioned for elliptical galaxies and
spherical bulges and their mass distribution can be determined.

Dark Matter Distributions

As dark matter (DM) does not interact with electromagnetic waves, then the mass-luminosity
relation 2.1 doesn’t work to find the matter distribution of the halos. Then, the dark matter
distribution is indirectly measured through rotation curves for spiral galaxies or velocity
dispersion for elliptical galaxies. Additionally, in order to understand how is the dark
matter distributed in the halos it is very common to use N-body simulations of represen-
tative portions of a universe (with pre-defined cosmological model), in these simulations
the particles of DM evolve only by gravity and its distribution can be study in the time.
Two-power density models are in agreement with structures of dark matter produced in
simulations. In these models assuming spherical symmetry, the density profile is given by
ρ0
ρ(r) = , (2.10)
(r/a)α (1 + r/a)β−α
2.2. COLLISIONS OF STELLAR SYSTEMS 21

where ρ0 and a are the central density and the scale length of the distribution, respectively.
Models with β = 4 are called Dehnen models [Dehnen 1993]; [Tremaine 1994], β = 4
and α = 1 are called Hernquist model [Hernquist 1990], while β = 4 and α = 2 are
called a Jaffe model [Jaffe 1983]. The dark matter distributions are modeled by β ' 3
and α in (1,1.5), e.g. the NFW model [Navarro 1996] has β = 3 and α = 1.
In N-body simulations with dark matter the parameters of the matter distribution directly
depend on the selected cosmological model, e.g. in one of the most used models, NFW
model, r200 is the distance within which the density of the distribution is 200 times the
cosmological critical density ρc , the interior mass to r200 is M200 = 200ρc 43 πr200
3
, and the
scale length rs is related to r200 through the concentration parameter c ≡ r200 /rs which
gives a measure of how dense is a halo (high concentrations for high densities). With this
parameters the final form for the NFW profile is

200 c3 ρ c 1
ρ(r) = , (2.11)
3 ln(1 + c) − c/(1 + c) (r/rs )(1 + r/rs )2
In summary, using the mass-luminosity relation or N-body cosmological simulations the
mass distributions for baryonic and dark matter components are well known for the galax-
ies.

2.2 Collisions of Stellar Systems

In this section we study the main implications of encounters between stellar systems,
considering these as a collisionless systems, these results are valid for dark matter distri-
butions because in this work we are considering them as collisionless components.

Collisionless Systems
To study the stellar systems dynamics in collision we must first consider that stellar sys-
tems are collisionless systems. A collisionless system is defined by the relaxation time.
To understand what is the relaxation time we build its definition. Let us consider a star
crossing a galaxy (subject star) of radius R with an initial speed v, this star takes a cross
time tcross = R/v to do it; while crossing the galaxy, field stars slowly modified the ve-
locity of the subject star by their mutual gravitational interaction, when the subject star’s
N
speed changed a by v the star has crossed with nrelax = 8 ln Λ
stars field (ln Λ is called the
Coulomb logarithm [Binney 2008]), then the necessary time for that subject star to change
its velocity a by 4v = v due to its interaction with nrelax stars field is the relaxation time,
so

trelax ≡ nrelax × tcross . (2.12)

For a typical galaxy tcross ≈ 108 yr while N ≈ 1011 particles, the relaxation time is ap-
proximately 1016 yr, but galaxies have lived hundreds of times their crossing time. Thus,
all the stars in the galaxy are moving like if the stellar system behave as a smooth gravita-
tional field and not like a distribution of points. This defines what is known as collisionless
system.
22 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Using our Galaxy as a particular case, let us consider the solar neighborhood in an isolated
Galaxy. For particles moving in straight lines the mean free path is λ = 1/(nσ), where n
is the number density and σ is the cross section for each particle. Assuming stars are rigid
spheres σ = π(2R )2 , since the solar radius is R = 2.26 × 10−8 pc, and the average
number density of stars is n ' 30pc−2 , then λ ' 1.6 × 1014 pc; near to the Sun the
mean velocity v is about 50kms−1 = 51 × 10−6 pc yr−1 , thereby the mean free time to
collide is t = λ/v ' 3 × 1018 yr, 108 times longer than the age of the Galaxy. It is
then clear that the collisions between stars are very unlikely. Now, if the Galaxy collides,
in the solar neighborhood the fraction of the area of the galactic disk filled by stars is
N πR 2
≈ 4.8 × 10−14 . Thus even if the Galaxy undergoes an interaction with other
galaxy the probability that stars of both systems collide is very small.

Interacting Stellar Systems

When two galaxies are approaching and their relative distance is close, the dynamics and
kinematics of both galaxies change, this event is called a galactic collision. The final
effects induced by such collision depend on both mass ratio and relative velocities of the
interacting galaxies.
Galactic collisions strongly disturb the dynamics of the gas inside them, if a couple of
gas clouds belonging to each of the interacting galaxies collide, shock waves would be
driven into the clouds, heating and compressing the gas. After shock waves, the gas in
denser parts would rapidly cool itself and fragment into new stars. The most massive
of these stars can heat and photo-ionize most of the remaining gas and finally exploit
as supernovae, thereby shock-heating the gas. Astrophysicist today still do not have a
sufficient understanding of this phenomena, contrary to the case of the distribution of
collisionless systems (stars and dark matter) where the knowledge of the consequences of
the interactions are wider, since the only significant effect is gravitational.
When two o more galaxies are interacting, the target galaxy is the galaxy in which is
focused the study effects of collisions, other galaxies are considered that fall in the target
galaxy and are called satellite galaxies. Particularly, if the target galaxy is much more
massive that its satellites then also is called host galaxy.
During the interaction of galaxies, the target galaxy will attract the nearest particles be-
longing to the satellite galaxy with a stronger gravitational field, such gradient leads to
the tidal tails of stars and gas between the galaxies as is shown in Figure 2.2. In this
procedure particles which were bound to the satellite become bound to target galaxy, this
phenomena depend on the distance from each particle of the satellite to the target galaxy
center of mass, or the same, on the distance from the satellite center of mass to their own
particles, then for different time instants there is a distance from the satellite center of
mass of which the binding energy is positive and the particles are stripped and become
particles of the target galaxy, this distance is defined as tidal radius (rt ) of the satellite.
There are different methods to estimate the tidal radius, in numerical experiments the tidal
radius is by definition the radius of which a star in a galaxy becomes unbound and remains
bound to another galaxy. Other methods developed for observations use the density pro-
files and stars velocities. For instance, [Binney 1987] describe one method where the tidal
radius is measured fitting the density profile and taking the finite radius where the den-
2.2. COLLISIONS OF STELLAR SYSTEMS 23

Figure 2.2: Tidal tails in interacting galaxies, taken from

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/js/lectures/cannibalism/cannibalism2.html

sity drops to zero; other methods used for satellite galaxies [Read 2006] consider that the
tidal radius depends on the potential of the host galaxy, the satellite potential, the satellite
orbit and the star orbit in the satellite assuming that the tidal radius is the solution to the
equation 2.13 (basically it is the radius where the contours of equal effective potential of
both galaxies cross and the stellar velocity is zero). Figure 2.52 shows the contours of
potential of two point masses in a rotating frame. The L- points are the Lagrange points,
close to L3 the contours interset. In 2.13 G is the gravitational constant, Ω is the angular
velocity of the satellite, Ωs is the angular velocity of the star within the satellite, x is the
vector distance joining the satellite center of mass to that of the host galaxy, Ms (r) and
Mg (x) are the satellite and target galaxy mass distributions, respectively, and α accounts
for the type of star orbit in the satellite as in 2.14.

GMg (x) GMg (x − rt ) GMs (rt )

− + − Ω2 rt − 2αΩΩs rt = 0, (2.13)
x2 (x − rt )2 rt2


 1 prograde
α= 0 radial (2.14)
−1 retrograde.


The tidal radius defines the region of current mass transference between two galaxies.
Then, the gravitational stripping helps new stars to enrich the dynamics, distribution of
mass and population of the target galaxy, thereby the galactic collisions determine the
evolution and final state of the galaxies. Hereinafter we describe some analytical results
for the dynamics of interacting galaxies as a function of the mass ratios and the ratios
velocity of the colliding bodies.
24 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Figure 2.3: Contours of equal effective potential for two point masses, the L-points are
the Lagrange points, the tidal radius is the cross of contours close to L3 [Binney 1987]

2.3 Mergers
When two galaxies of similar mass collide at a speed that is comparable with the internal
velocities of the galaxies, there are not analytical results to predict what happen during the
collision because perturbations on both systems are very strong and usually initial galaxies
are destroyed. We must use numerical simulations to study this type of interactions.
These simulations suggest that a slow encounter between two galaxies often leads the
two systems to merge into one. In this section we will show energy ranges and angular
momentum, and impact parameters for which the encounter leads to a merger.

2.3.1 Encounters between Spherical Galaxies

Lets us consider first the simplest case: the collision of two non-rotating galaxies with
the same mass M and internal structure, being characterized by the half mass radius rh ,
defined as the radius of which half of the system mass concentrates. To define quantities
that help us to characterize the mergers, we use K and W , the kinetic and the galaxy total
potential energy, if hv 2 i is the mean specific kinetic energy the virial theorem leads to

|W | = M hv 2 i, (2.15)
defining rg as the gravitational radius

GM 2
rg ≡ , (2.16)
|W |
2.3. MERGERS 25

Observations suggest that in many simple stellar systems [Spitzer 1969], the half mass
radius is related to the gravitational radius as rh ' 0.4rg , then

0.4GM
hv 2 i ' , (2.17)
rh
Let the system reduced mass be µ = 12 M , and the energy and angular momentum per
unit of mass be Eorb and L respectively. Then to characterize the mergers we will use the
dimensionless parameters Ê and L̂, the energy over the mean kinetic energy and mean
angular momentum in rh of galaxies respectively

Eorb
Ê ≡ 1 2 , (2.18)
2
hv i
L
L̂ ≡ , (2.19)
rh hv 2 i1/2
Now we use Ê and L̂ to study how the orbital energy and angular momentum to deter-
mine whether the encounter leads to a merger we use Figure 2.4 of L̂ vs. Ê. Points on the
right hand of the vertical line “PARABOLIC ORBITS” (Eorb = 0), have unbound orbits
with positive orbital energy, while on the left hand the orbits have Eorb < 0 with hyper-
bolic and elliptic orbits, the latter orbits eventually produce mergers because the orbital
energy gradually becomes internal energy of the galaxies until merger is completed. The
continuous line shows the angular momentum of the circular orbits with energy Ê. Since
for circular orbits the angular momentum is maximum, then the region above this line
corresponds to forbidden orbits. For bound orbits time for merging depend on energy and
angular momentum, if the orbit has low energy and low angular momentum the merger is
faster. The dashed line divides the region corresponding to bound orbits into a lower por-
tion, where galaxies merge within a Hubble time, and an upper region, in which mergers
occur slower or not at all.
It is sometimes useful to parametrize the unbound orbits with the initial speed V and the
impact parameter b of the mass reduced particle µ, then in the initial state Ê = 12 V 2 and
L̂ = bV , hence

V2
Ê = , (2.20)
hv 2 i
bp
L̂ = Ê, (2.21)
rh
When Ê and b and therefore L̂ are sufficiently large, then the galaxies will not merge. If
L̂ = 0 then b = 0, i.e, the encounter is head-on with a maximum energy Êmax then the
velocity is maximum, this implies that the mergers will occur for V ≤ Vmax . As Ê → 0,
L̂max has no limits because it can happen that the orbit becomes bound and the merger is
mandatory.

When two spherical galaxies with unequal mass collide, the stars of the small satellite that
is disrupted by a host galaxy form a stream that eventually will scatter. If the host potential
26 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Figure 2.4: criteria for merging in the L̂-Ê plane[Binney 1987].

is regular, the stars will finally spread into a cloud of particles uniformly distributed in
angles. This clouds reach a surface density distribution that leads to box and loop orbits.
A box Orbit produces a X-sharped structure, while a loop orbit produces an annulus with
sharp edges Figure (2.5 top). The projection of the particles distribution edges can appear
as shells Figure (2.5 bottom). In the particular case of a galaxy on a radial orbit in a
spherical potential, spherical shells are formed at the turning points of the orbits, in non-
radial orbits the shells are also formed but with a more complex geometry. Generally each
merger increases the radius and mass of the host galaxy.

2.3.2 Encounters of Rotating Systems

In this section we discuss the effect of the rotation in the final state of under collision
galaxies, to ease the interpretation, let us consider two extreme cases: when the spin of the
galaxy is completely anti-parallel to the orbital angular momentum (retrograde encounter)
and when the spin is completely parallel to the orbital angular momentum (prograde en-
counter). Figures 2.6 and 2.7 show the numerical experiment (very simple but illustrative)
obtained by one of the pioneering works by [Toomre 1964] & [Toomre 1972], the figures
shows snapshots for two particles (1 and 2) of same mass in a parabolic trajectory, one of
this particles (particle 1) has five rings of massless particles orbiting it, the equations of
motion for the massless particles are solved while the massive particles are interacting. In
Figure 2.6 the rings have a spin anti-parallel to the orbital angular momentum of particle
2, we can see that the interaction is not very violent for the internal rings, but in Figure 2.7
where the rings spin is parallel to the angular momentum of the particle 2, the destruction
of most of the rings is evident.
The difference between the experiment final results show us that retrograde encounters are
2.3. MERGERS 27

Figure 2.5: top: The box and loop orbits. Stars at randomly chosen phases on the orbits to
give a visual impression of the density distribution in the orbit. bottom: Elliptical galaxy
with shells NGC 3923. [Binney 2008].

smoother than the progrades, this is because the gravitational force of particle 2 makes
angular momentum to be transfered to the rings of particle 1 during the interaction, when
the encounter is retrograde the rings rotational inertia makes the transference of the an-
gular momentum less efficient, but when the encounter is prograde, the transference is
maximum which drives to a maximum transference of orbital energy of particle 2 to the
internal energy of the particle 1 rings, then the heating of the rings is larger in progrades
encounters than in retrogrades.
Then with a simple experiment Toomre & Toomre revealed the important role of the
rotation of the colliding galaxies in the time and intensity of the interaction that defines
whether the final state of the encounter will be a merger or not.

2.3.3 Encounters with Flattened Systems

Before discussing the effects on flattened and axis-symmetric systems like disks, we will
talk about the behavior of the stellar orbits near the mean plane of the disk. In the case
of the disk, the solution of the equations of motion for one star is run over a cylindrical
coordinate system, which by symmetry has a potential written with two coordinates R
and z, Φ(R, z) where the star three-dimensional motion can be reduced to the motion of
the star in a plane (meridional pane) with effective potential

L2z
Φef f ≡ Φ(R, z) + , (2.22)
2R2
28 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Figure 2.6: Disk with spin and orbital angular momentum anti-parallel [Toomre 1972].

here the z-component of the angular momentum is conserved and for circular orbits Φef f
has a minimum at R = Rg (Lz ) where Rg (Lz ) is the guiding-center-radius for a circular
orbit of angular momentum Lz . We define

x ≡ R − Rg , (2.23)
so in the meridional plane (x, z) = (0, 0) we expand Φef f in Taylor’s series around this
point to obtain

∂ 2 Φef f ∂ 2 Φef f
   
1 2 1
Φef f = Φef f (Rg , 0) + x + z 2 + O(xz 2 ), (2.24)
2 ∂R2 (Rg ,0) 2 ∂z 2 (Rg ,0)

the proportional term to xz vanishes because the effective potential is assumed to be

symmetric about z = 0, and if we omit higher powers of x and z we have the epicyclic
approximation, where the equations of motion for R and z are

∂Φef f
R̈ = − , (2.25)
∂R

∂Φef f
z̈ = − . (2.26)
∂z
2.3. MERGERS 29

Figure 2.7: Disk with spin and orbital angular momentum parallel [Toomre 1972].

If we define the epicyclic frequency κ and the vertical frequency ν as

∂ 2 Φef f
 
2
κ (Rg ) ≡ , (2.27)
∂R2 (Rg ,0)

∂ 2 Φef f
 
2
ν (Rg ) ≡ , (2.28)
∂z 2 (Rg ,0)

using the definition of x the motion equations take the form

ẍ = −κ2 x, (2.29)

z̈ = −ν 2 z, (2.30)
30 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

the last equations imply that in the meridional plane a star has two simple harmonic mo-
tion in the directions R and z, then while the star complete one orbital period around the
galactic center with angular frequency Ω, it oscillates about a equilibrium point in R and
z, so generally in the plane XY the star moves on an ellipse called epicycle around the
center. The lengths of the semi-axes satisfy the ratio
X κ
= , (2.31)
Y 2Ωg
where Ωg is the angular frequency of a circular orbit of radius Rg , for the solar neigh-
borhood X/Y ' 0.7. Besides leading to a fist understanding of the stellar motion, the
epicyclic approximation provides a criterion for the dynamical stability of the stellar disk
developed by [Toomre 1964]. Basically this criterion makes a comparison between the ra-
dial velocity dispersion σR and the epicycle frequency, namely, radial perturbations over
the stellar disk that produce extra gravitational forces inward (compression) and outward
(pressure), if this perturbations increase the radial velocity dispersions such that the epicy-
cle approximation is broken, the stellar disk becomes unstable and could be destroyed, the
criterion is mathematically expressed as
σR κ
Q≡ , (2.32)
3.36GΣ
Where G is the gravitational constant and Σ is the surface density for the disk, this is the
Toomre‘s stability criterion. In a collision with a flattened system like a galactic disk,
the velocity dispersion increases, this is called heating of the disk. For a warm disk, if
Q > 1 the disk will be stable and survive to radial perturbations, otherwise, the disk will
be unstable and will not have rotational support. An encounter with a disk galaxy would
produce different effects on the disks as function of the velocity, mass ratios, impact
parameter and the dynamical state of the disk in the instant of the collision. To mention
the most relevant, if the galaxy has gas and dust, the interaction trigger the starburst in
the galaxy consuming this collisional material, also gas and dust would be expelled from
the galaxy to the intergalactic medium. If the expelled particles energy is not enough for
the escape of the galaxy, these particles would return to the galaxy and would form new
stars. The heating in the stellar disk would lead to formation of substructures like warps,
spiral arms, rings, bulges, central bars, even the disk would not survive to the collision
and would finish in a elliptical or irregular galaxy. Examples of some of the above effects
are displayed in Section 2.6.

2.4 Dynamical Friction

When stellar systems collide there is a permanent transference of systems orbital energy to
random motion of the constituent particles, this loss of energy is like a friction force acting
on the moving galaxies, then this phenomena is called dynamical friction. Dynamical
friction appears in all kind of galactic interactions, but it is easier to understand for minor
mergers, where the mass of one of the galaxies is larger than the mass of the other.
Let us assume an object of mass M (a satellite galaxy or globular cluster) with constant
density profile ρ in motion through an infinite number of particles of gas, stars and dark
2.4. DYNAMICAL FRICTION 31

matter. The mass of each particle from this gravitational sea is assumed to be very small
compared to M (ma << M ) such that M moves forward without deviation. Under these
conditions particles closest to M are attracted by its stronger gravitational force that the
rest of particles, which drives to a over density of particles on the object trajectory. This
over density of particles lead to a gravitational force contrary to the trajectory of M ,
therefore the object loses kinetic energy and undergoes a velocity decrease.
[Chandrasekhar 1943] developed an approximate expression for the dynamical friction,
where the object M is considered a point mass in its center of mass moving in a constant
particles distribution
Z v M 
dvM 2 2 2 vM
= −16π G M ma ln Λ va f (va )dva 3 , (2.33)
dt 0 vM
2
bmax Vo
Here ln Λ ≡ ln G(M +ma )
is the Coulomb logarithm, bmax is the maximum impact param-
eter of the collision, G is the gravitational constant and f (va ) is the distribution function
for the background particles velocities. If M is an extended body of radius rh the impact
parameter is changed to
s
2G(M + ma )
bh = r h 1 + 2
, (2.34)
rh vtyp
where vtyp is the relative velocity of the rest of bodies in t = −∞ and Λ is now of the
form
s
rh2 2rh
Λh = Λ 2
+ , (2.35)
bmax Λbmax
so the expression for point M only overestimates slightly the drag over an extent body.
Chandrasekhar’s formula derived for a mass moving through an infinite and homogeneous
background, is also useful for a small body traveling through a much larger host system,
but with some deficiencies:

• The choices for bmax and vtyp are rather arbitrary.

• We are neglecting the mutual interaction between the particles of the gravitational
reservoir.

• For equation 2.33 we assume Kleperian hyperbolic orbits for the stars when M is
passing, but the real orbits would be more complex.

As an application of the dynamical friction we made the calculation of the time (tf ric )
required for a satellite galaxy to reach the center of a dark matter halo with mass MH and
density profile 2.36 of [Hernquist 1990]. The equation 2.33 for a body with a sufficiently
large vM remains as 2.37
Ma 1
ρH = , (2.36)
2π r (a + r)3
32 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

dvM vM
= −4πG2 M ρH ln Λ 3 , (2.37)
dt vM
the friction force over the satellite is

dvm −4πG2 M 2 ρH ln Λ
F =M = 2
, (2.38)
dt vM
this force at a distance r is tangential and directed opposite to the velocity of the satellite,
making it lose angular momentum L at a rate

dL −4πG2 M 2 ρH ln Λr
= −F r = 2
, (2.39)
dt vM
q
but L = M rvc being vc = Gm(r) r
the circular velocity of the satellite due to the internal
mass of Hernquist m(r), then the rate of change for L is
√
dL M GMH r1/2 (r + 3a) dr
= , (2.40)
dt 2(r + a)2 dt
where a is the scale length for the halo. Equating 2.39 and 2.40 and using that in t = 0
the satellite at in ri and when reaches the center at t = tf ric r = 0, then tf ric is
 
1 1 3 3 3a 2 2
tf ric = − (r − ri ) + (r − ri ) . (2.41)
4GM a ln Λ 3 2

As the falling time of the satellite to the center of the host galaxy depends directly on
the density profile of the host halo, we will calculate this difference for two density pro-
files: Hernquist and NFW ([Navarro 1996]). This experiment is motivated the report in
[Springel 2005a] where both profiles were compared, the Figure 2.8 shows both density
profiles for halos of equal total mass as a function of radius, the profiles have the same
form in internal regions, but in the external regions even before of the virial radius the
profiles do not converge.
We will obtain the explicit difference in the dynamical friction due to the profiles dis-
crepancy, let us assume the same satellite galaxy of mass M falling from the same initial
position and initial velocity to halos of the same mass but one with Herquist distribution
and other with NFW distribution as shown in Figure 2.8. Using the equation 2.37 for
each profile it is easy to see that the acceleration for Hernquist (aH ) and NFW (aN F W ) are
related through the ratio of the number density profiles at the same radial position r as
ρnH
aH = aN F W , (2.42)
ρnN F W
where the number density profile for a mass halo Mh is

Mh a 1
ρnH = , (2.43)
2πma r (r + a)3
2.4. DYNAMICAL FRICTION 33

Density Profiles
6
10
Hernquist
NFW
105

104 r200 rvir

ρ/ρcri

103

102

101

100 -3 -2 -1 0 1
10 10 10 10 10
r/r200

Figure 2.8: Density profiles NFW and Hernquist. Both profiles are similar only in their
internal region.

for the Hernquist density profile and

Mh c3 1
ρnN F W = 3
, (2.44)
4πr200 ma ln(1 + c) − c/(1 + c) (r/rs )(1 + r/rs )2

for the NFW density profile, here r200 is the radius where the density is 200 times the
critical density of the universe, rs is the scale length for the NFW halo with concentration
c ≡ r200 /rs .
The ratio between the accelerations by dynamical friction in both profiles can be com-
puted easily from 2.38, in Figure 2.9 we have the accelerations ratio as a function of the
radius, it is clear that the dynamical friction acts differently in each density profile despite
the halos converge in the internal regions, this is because when the satellite begins its
motion in each halo, the distribution of mass that drags the satellite is different, then the
initial accelerations are not the same and the orbits of the satellite are different. Then, it
is clear that density profiles of the halos that do not converge in the external region pro-
duce very different orbits of satellite because the dynamical friction acts different on the
satellite.
34 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Ratio accelerations
1

0.8

0.6
aH/aNFW

r200 rvir

0.4

0.2

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/rvir

Figure 2.9: Aceleration ratios between NFW and Herquist, the effect of the dynamical
friction is not the same over the satellite.

2.5 Encounters at Hight Velocities

Let us consider two interacting galaxies A y B, by the gravitational interaction the orbital
energy of the galaxy B becomes energy for the stars in the galaxy A, if v∞ is the relative
speed between the two galaxies, then with the galaxies approximation, the star’s orbit
with respect to the center of the galaxy A gains energy at a rate v · g[r(t)], where g is
the net gravitational field at position r for a star with velocity v with respect to A. When
v∞ increases the time to required for the galaxies to reach the point of closest approach
diminishes, then the energy increment (see 2.45) diminishes too and the star’s orbit gains
a small amount of energy from the orbit of the galaxy, hence high speed encounters can
be generating small perturbations in steady state systems. In this section we summarize
the main analytical results for this case of encounters at hight velocities.
Z to
∆E = v · g[r(t)]dt, (2.45)
0
Let us consider two colliding systems with masses M1 and M2 and median radii r1 and
r2 . In the point of closest approach the centers are separated a distance b0 and the relative
speed is V . Then the time of duration of the encounter may be roughly estimated as

max(r1 , r2 , b0 )
tenc ≈ , (2.46)
V
2.6. OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE 35

If the systems have internal velocity dispersions of order σi (i = 1 for galaxy A and i = 2
fort galaxy B), then the characteristic crossing times of the majority of their stars will
be comparable to ti ≡ ri /σi , if ti  tenc , this case is called the impulse approximation
where it holds that

max(r1 , r2 , b0 )
V  σi i = 1, 2. (2.47)
ri
Then in the impulse approximation the stars in each system barely move from their po-
sitions respect to the center of the galaxy during the encounter. If we assume an axis-
symmetric system hence the internal energy changes to
1X
∆E = mα |∆vα |2 , (2.48)
2 α
where α denote the α-th particle of the galaxy M1 , then during the interaction the system
is not in virial equilibrium. After modifying their internal kinetic energy return to the
equilibrium, there before the encounter we have by the virial theorem

T0 = −E0 , (2.49)
If during the encounter kinetic energy increases in δT , the final total energy is

E1 = E0 + δT, (2.50)
then the virial theorem for the final equilibrium is

T1 = −E1 = −(E0 + δT ) = T0 − δT, (2.51)

so in the new equilibrium state the kinetic energy decreases from T0 + δT to T0 − δT , an
amount of 2δT . When the impact parameter b0 is small (tidal approximation) the velocity
increments tend to deform a sphere of stars into an ellipsoid whose long axis lies in the
direction of perturbation point of closest approach. This distortion is similar to the way in
which the Moon raises tides on the surface of the oceans, where the total energy change
is

4G2 M22 M1 2
∆E = r , (2.52)
3b04 V
with r2 being the mean-square radius of the perturbed system. From 2.52 it is clear that
when b0 decreases, then the energy change in the perturbed system increases, thereby
encounters with small impact parameter transfer more energy to the perturbed system
than a large number of distant encounters.

2.6 Observational Evidence

When we look through the telescope, we can see galaxies in states out of the equilibrium.
Photometric studies have shown that the interacting galaxies forming these systems share
stars and gas through tails. In this section we will show images of interacting galaxies or
36 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

galaxies after a collision in stages of nonequilibrium. This systems and shapes are very
well reproduced by numerical experiments (simulations) with or without gas, this simu-
lations are necessary to understand the physical processes involved in merger of galaxies
that show hinds on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the universe.
Figure 2.10 shows some systems of interacting galaxies, all images and their comments
were from the gallery of pictures from the web site of the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 2.10a shows the large Whirlpool Galaxy (on the left hand) known for its sharply
defined spiral arms. Their prominence could be the result of the Whirlpool’s grav-
itational tidal tail with its smaller companion galaxy (on the right hand). This tidal
tail is produced by the tidal stripping to the satellite galaxy due large galaxy.

• 2.10b shows the small, blue galaxy visible in the upper left corner of the Tadpole
ripped through the larger spiral galaxy, distorting it and pulling out a long tail of
stars, gas and dust. Young blue star clusters, spawned by the collision, are evident in
the tail and spiral arms. Probably this is a approach before complete merge between
two galaxies.

• In this pair (2.10c) of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147, the blue
ring-shaped galaxy’s distinctive look was probably created when the galaxy on the
left passed through the galaxy on the right. This is a clear evidence of a radial
perturbation produced in a galactic interaction.

• In 2.10d there is a face-on galaxy lying precisely in front of another spiral galaxy.
The chance alignment allows us to see the dark material (dust) in the front galaxy,
thanks to the brightness of the galaxy behind it.

• Two galaxies in swing passed each other (2.10e) in a graceful performance chore-
ographed by gravity. This is one of the hundreds of interacting and merging galaxies
known in our nearby universe.

• Three of the galaxies in this famous group (2.10f), Stephan’s Quintet, are distorted
from their gravitational interactions with one another, and exchanging mass each
other.

• One member of the group, NGC 7320 (upper left) is actually seven times closer to
Earth than the rest. The pair of galaxies (2.10g), NGC 4676, also known as ”The
Mice” for their tails of stars and gas, have collided and will eventually merge into a
single galaxy. Streams of material have been tugged out of the galaxies by the force
of gravity, triggering new starbirth.

• Finally in 2.10h a small spiral galaxy is caught between two elliptical galaxies, in
a cluster called the Hickson Compact Group 90. The ellipticals are stretching and
will eventually swallow the smaller galaxy.
2.6. OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE 37

(a)Whirlpool Galaxy. Credit: NASA,

(b) Tadpole. Credit: NASA, H.
Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), (c) Arp 147. Credit: NASA, ESA, and
ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The
M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), M. Livio (STScI)
Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
the ACS Science Team, and ESA

(d) A face-on galaxy. Credit: (e) Gravitational swing. Credit:

(f) Stephan’s Quintet. Credit: NASA,
NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage
ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
(STScI/AURA) Team (STScI/AURA)

(g) The Mice. Credit: NASA, H.

(h) Hickson Compact Group 90.
Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO),
Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Sharples
M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI),
(University of Durham)
the ACS Science Team, and ESA

Figure 2.10: Examples of interacting galaxies. All Images come from the galery of pic-
tures of the web site of the Hubble Space Telescope.
38 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Chapter 3
Finding Disk in Simulations

In N-body simulations as well as in observations of compound galaxies there is a common

problem, how do we identify the particles that belong to each of the galactic components?

In this chapter we present a method to find particles belonging to a stellar disk in simu-
lations that do not include a gaseous component. In this chapter we work on a kinematic
criteria to detect stars belonging to the galactic disk or bulge. The method does not require
photometric or metallicity analysis. We tested our method on initial conditions of galaxies
with and without bulge composed only of dark matter and stars. Particles of bulge and
disk are generated separately, then mixed, and finally separated again with our method.

Introduction
In simulations of the galaxies evolution that aim to study the properties and evolution of
galactic disks it is necessary to identify which particles truly form the disk. The lack of
certainty in which particles belonging to each galactic component is called the mixing
problem, the mixing is produced by two reasons; first, the initial conditions for this sim-
ulations usually come from approximate methods that produce random positions and ve-
locities for particles that satisfy certain distribution, then the galaxies are not numerically
relaxed and particles that are created in the disk could not be dynamically according with
a disk; second, the dynamical evolution of the system can change the kinematics of the
particles and produce mixing of particles between the galactic components ([Abadi 2003],
[Scannapieco 2009]). Therefore, it is clear that in each snapshot of the simulation it is nec-
essary to implement a method to identify each galactic component avoiding computation
of wrong properties like densities profiles, velocity dispersions, gravitational potentials,
and so on. by the noise of particles due to the mixing.
The mixing problem is presented in observations. Given an image of a disk galaxy deter-
mines which are the stars belonging to each galactic component, e.g., in the central region
which of the observed stars belong to the bulge or the disk is problematic, for example, as
there are different formation process for the bulge, then the population of stars in the bulge
can be very wide and bulge’s stars can be of the same type than stars of the disk, thereby,
then the mixing appear in the observations of galaxy central region when only photometry

39
40 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

is available. The observers solution is to define the bulge as the region where the luminos-
ity profiles for bulge and disk are cut. For that two fits to the profiles are used; usually, an
exponential for the disk and a Sérsic type for the bulge ([Fisher 2009], [Oohama 2009],
[Maller 2006], [Yoshino 2008]). Other method uses spectrometry through studies by age-
metallicity assuming for example that stars of the bulge are older than thin disk stars
[Abadi 2003]. There are algorithms used for the decomposition like GALFIT [Peng 2002]
where the galaxy is compared or fit with photometric luminosity profiles, thus the algo-
rithm is able to detect the disk, bulge and bars by making a fit to exponential and Sérsic
profiles.

In hydrodynamical simulations, there are several methods widely used to achieve the
galactic decomposition; one of them consists in analyze the kinematics of the particles
considering that the particles associated to the bulge have more random velocities than
the disk ([Abadi 2003], [Scannapieco 2009]). In this kind of simulations is common to
make mock images of brightness and age-metallity distributions for the galaxies and to
apply the methods and algorithms used in observations.
The goal of this chapter is to describe a method to detect disks in galaxies simulations
only by considering the kinematics of stars. This is important because it allow us to
study the evolution of the disk without the noise due to the mixing of particles from other
galactic components and neighbor galaxies. Also, with this method we can research the
provenance of the particles that form bulges, bars, rings, separation thin-thick disk, etc.

3.1 Method to Find Disks

As the main goal of our work is to study the evolution and survival of galactic disks,
we need to find the “real” disks in our simulations to avoid the mixing problem in their
analysis. Here we describe our method to find the disk and will prove this in isolated and
interacting galaxies.

Criteria for Finding Disks

Our main goal is to find the galactic disk supported by rotation in simulations of disk
galaxies without gas. Considering the epicyclic approximation (Section 2.3.3), we assume
that orbits of the particles belonging to the disk are in roughly circular orbits and are close
to the galactic midplane. From this orbits all the particles whose orbit has energy between
E and E + δE, and have maximum z-component of the angular momentum could define
the midplane for a particular disk. In Figure 3.1 the red dots show the z-component
of angular momentum as a function of the energy for the initial conditions of a disk, the
blue line indicates particles with maximum z-component (Jzmax ) for each energy interval,
this particles will have the most circular orbits and will define the midplane for that disk
because their total angular momentum is roughly in z-direction.
Once we know the midplane of the galaxy it is necessary to detect whether the galaxy
is a simple disk or contains some type of sub-structure. The circularity parameter  can
be defined as  = Jz /Jzmax [Abadi 2003] and is useful for this particular case, with
3.1. METHOD TO FIND DISKS 41

Jz - MMP 0.988 2710 control

0.035
Jz
Jzmax
0.03

0.025

0.02
Jz

0.015

0.01

0.005

-0.005
-1.1 -1 -0.9 -0.8 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3
Energy

Figure 3.1: z-component of angular momentum as a function of the total energy for parti-
cles of a disk, The blue line shows the the maximum z-component (Jzmax ) in each interval
of energy.

this definition, the parameter of circularity is closer to one when the z-component of the
angular momentum of the particle is closer to Jmax corresponding to the energy of its
orbit, i.e. its angular momentum is mostly on z-direction and its orbit is nearly circular
around the axis of symmetry of the galaxy. Particles with  closer to one will belong to
a supported by rotation disk; otherwise, if  is around zero the angular momentum of the
particle with Jmax is greater than z-component of the angular momentum of the particles,
this happens when the particles belong to the structure supported by pressure where the
orbits have random directions and velocities. Figure 3.2 (left) shows the distribution of
 for a disk galaxy without central spheroid, the peak appearing close to  = 1 indicates
the presence of a disk mostly supported by rotation, it is notable that there is not a peak
around  = 0 because this galaxy does not have a central bulge. In Figure 3.2 (right) we
show the distribution for a galaxy with disk and bulge, this galaxy has 117327 particles in
its disk and 52569 in the bulge all of equal mass. This distribution shows two peaks: one
close to  = 1 for the disk as in the previous case and other for the bulge around  = 0, the
peak of the bulge is wider and less pronounced than that of the disk because the motion
of their particles have no preferred direction and net speed close to zero.
The distributions of the parameter of circularity only shows whether there are or not struc-
tures different to disk in the galaxy, but tell us nothing about the membership of the parti-
cles to a particular component. Defining the membership to a component with the value of
42 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

 is dangerous because the parameter of circularity does not consider inclinations of orbits
respect to midplane of the galaxy, then by the definition of  orbits with large inclinations
lead to values of circularity parameter close to zero. This will happen with particles that
belongs to different components like bulges, thick disks, stellar halos, etc. where the
inclinations of the orbits produce values of the parameter of the circularity around zero.

0.09
Disk distribution Disk+Bulge distribution
0.08

0.07

0.06
Frequency

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.02

0.01

0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 -1
1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
ε ε

Figure 3.2: Distributions of the circular parameter for a disk and a disk with bulge.

In order to find the galactic disk in simulations of disk galaxies, we tried to use two criteria
that take into account the inclinations of the orbits of the particles, those criteria only are
evaluated for particles with a distance minor than 10 kpc. The first criterion from now and
then called criterion 1 is defined as follows, let us consider that a particle in the galaxy
has a inclination respect to the center of the stellar component like in Figure 3.3, then
defining a threshold angle α, if the cosine of the particle inclination satisfies the following
criterion

J~p · Jstellar
~
≥ cos α, (3.1)
Jp Jstellar

Galactic disk

Figure 3.3: Ilustrative picture about threshold angle α used in the criteria 1.

where Jp is the angular momentum of the particle and Jstellar is the angular momentum
of the galactic stellar component that is over z-axis. In this criterion α defines a cone
from the center of stellar component in which particles will belong to the disk. In Figure
3.4 (left) there is a initial galactic disk selected with this criterion, this disk is cold in that
time, the criterion works well for that disk but in processes where the disk is heating and
3.1. METHOD TO FIND DISKS 43

its velocity dispersions is increased in all directions producing a disk more thick than the
initial, then particles of the disk will leave from cone defined by α and erroneously the
criterion does not consider them as belonging to disk, the wrong result of this selection is
shown in Figure 3.4 (right) where almost all of the disk is suppressed because the particles
are out of the cone of inclinations.

10
Cold Disk Hot Disk

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 3.4: left: cold disk selected with criteria 1, right: Hot disk selected with criteria 1.

The second criteria criteria 2 also takes an arbitrary inclination α but the selection is made
in energy intervals, and particles belonging to the disk are those that satisfy

~ (E)
J~p · Jzmax
≥ cos α, (3.2)
Jp Jzmax
where for particles with energy E, Jp is the particle angular momentum and Jzmax (E)
is the maximum z-component of angular momentum for that energy. Thereby, for each
energy interval the midplane is defined with the particles describing the most circular
orbits of the system, then there is a cone of inclinations for each energy interval. With this
criterion, when the galaxy is heating the cones of inclinations are modified avoiding the
rejection of particles that belong to the disk. Figure 3.5 shows a cold disk (left) selected
with this criteria, the results in cold disk is similar with the two criteria, but the Figure
3.5 (right) shown the selected disk with the criterion 2 for a hot disk, as it is clear in the
figure, this criterion is able to identify the disk when it is hot and its velocity dispersions
have increased but the dynamics of the disk unchanged, i.e. the gravitational potential
remains its cylindrical symmetry.
Then, in the following we used the parameter of circularity () in the analysis of our
disk to determine if the galaxy contains a disk component supported by rotation or other
44 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

10
Cold Disk Hot Disk

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 3.5: left: cold disk selected with criteria 2, right: Hot disk selected with criteria 2.

galactic components and used the criteria 2 to extract the stellar galactic disk. The choice
of the threshold inclination α could be arbitrary but testing with galaxies initial conditions
with well know disks and bulges show that 0.6 ≤ cos α ≤ 0.7 is an appropriated choice.
In next sections we will show the implementation of this method to disks with many and
few particles and disks in process of merger with satellites.

Test Galaxies
To test our method we generated numerical galaxies, these galaxies were generated for a
halo of dark matter with properties extracted from a cosmological simulation, the galactic
disk and bulge are generated with Mo model ([Mo 1998], this is detailed in the Chapter
4). We built a grid of disk galaxy models, some models represent isolated galaxies while
other are associated to galaxy mergers. The isolated galaxies have different bulge-to-disk
mass ratio, two of this galaxies have not bulge, one with a disk mass much smaller than
the other. We ran also some minor mergers to test the criteria to detect the disk when it is
heating and increasing its mass by the fall of satellite galaxies.
Table 3.1 summarizes the set of simulations used for our tests, all the galaxies have
7.40 × 109 M in their disks except DL that has 7.02 × 108 M . In Table 3.1 there are
the identifiers, bulge-to-disk mass ratio percent and number of satellites for fourteen sim-
ulations, two of them without bulge, two in interaction with satellite galaxies and the rest
are the same model of galaxy but with different bulge-to-disk mass ratio.
When we generate initial conditions, each particle is labeled such that for a galaxy we
know with certainty for the initial time to which galactic component belongs each particle
(bulge, disk, dark matter halo, etc...), then, all the galaxies will be tested at that time
comparing the mass obtained using our method against the mass of initial conditions. In
one hand the isolated galaxies show us the quality of the algorithm used for generating
the initial conditions because they will tell us which is the numerical noise in the mass
3.2. RESULTS 45

ID Galaxy Bulge-Disk mass ratio (%) Satellites

DL 0 0
D 0 0
D0 5 0
D1 10 0
D2 20 0
D3 30 0
D4 40 0
D5 50 0
D6 60 0
D7 70 0
D8 80 0
D9 90 0
D2S 20 3
D3S 30 3

Table 3.1: Bulge-Disk mass ratio for the fourteen test galaxies (repetitions of the same galaxy)
with the number of satellites in the system. Here D and DL are galaxies without bulge but DL has
low mass, D2S and D3S are galaxies with satellites without bulge, and the rest of the galaxies are
disk with bulges. The columns are: 1. identifier of the galaxy, 2. mass of the bulge compared with
the mass of the disk, 3. number of satellite galaxies in the system.

of each galactic component; additionally, with later analysis, changes in the kinematics
of particles after the numerical relaxation that leads to mass mixing between the galactic
components will be evident. On the other hand, analysis of disks interacting with satellites
show us the efficiency of our method for detecting the disk when there are mass mixing
from others galaxies.

3.2 Results

As it is explained in next chapter, the algorithm to built the initial conditions uses some
approximations to generate points whose distribution and kinematics form each galactic
component, then due to the approximations will be points with a kinematics that do not
correspond to their component. Thereby, our method applied to galaxies at t = 0 al-
ways shows disk with less particles than the disk generated by the algorithm, this because
the method extracts the particles that do not have kinematics corresponding to disk par-
ticles, i.e. the criterion finds the “real” disk of the simulation. Additionally, when this
disk evolves, wins or loses mass by different processes and this changes in mass will be
detected by the method. All disks in our simulations are selected inside 10kpc from the
center and with cos α = 0.7 for all energies.
46 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

10
Initial detected disk Initial detected disk Initial detected bulge

-5

-10
10
Detected disk after 2 Gyr Detected disk after 2 Gyr Detected bulge after 2 Gyr

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10

Figure 3.6: Initial stellar component (top) and after 2Gyr of evolution (bottom) for the
isolated galaxy with views: edge-on in XZ plane (left), face-on in XY plane (center), and
bulge XY plane (right)

3.2.1 Selected Disks in Isolated Galaxies

As an example of the implementation of our method we show an extracted disk of an
isolated galaxy with only disk component (galaxy D), the galaxy originally was generated
with 7.40×109 M of mass hosted inside a halo of dark matter, the details of the generation
of the galaxies will be exposed in the next chapter. The galaxy was relaxed during 2Gyr
to compare the disk with the initial conditions and to follow its evolution.
The disk in Figure 3.6 shows the initial stellar component (top) and 2Gyr after of evolution
(bottom) for the isolated galaxy with views: edge-on (left), face-on (center), and bulge
(right). After decomposition the method detected two components, one that defines a
galactic disk (center) and another with orbits featuring properties that define a component
like a little bulge (right), the final mass of the detected disk is 6.7 × 109 M while the
mass of the little bulge is 5 × 108 M respectively, these masses are the same after 2Gyr;
the little bulge with 7.5% of disk mass is in the central region of the galaxy, where the
particles orbits are due to a potential well with spherical symmetry. It is expected to
happen in all test galaxies, due to the influence in the halo potential well particles in the
central region of the galaxy.
After of 2Gyr and despite the formation of the little bulge the system remains essentially
as a disk, this is evident in the Figure 3.7 which shows the distribution for  where clearly
the disk component dominates the system in the time, the little bulge is not noticeable in
3.2. RESULTS 47

the distribution of  because its composed by very few particles that will not form a no-
torious peak in the distribution. This is evidence that the algorithm to generate the initial
conditions produce stable disks in the time, then in our galaxies is not expected substruc-
ture formation in the disk unless they are produced by disk interactions with external
stellar systems like satellite galaxies.

0.09
0 Gyr
1 Gyr
0.08 2 Gyr

0.07

0.06
Frequency

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.02

0.01

0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
ε

Figure 3.7: Histogram of the circularity parameter for an isolated disk in the time, the
histogram shows that the galaxy is essentially a disk in the time, this is an evidence of the
dependable of the algorithm to generate the initial conditions.

We also apply our method to a low mass disk (galaxy DL) 7 × 108 M , after selecting
the final disk had a mass of 6 × 108 M with a bulge of 6 × 107 M (10% of disk mass),
again this mases do not change in the time, in the Figure 3.8 (left) shows the initial stellar
component (top) and 2Gyr after evolution (bottom) for the isolated galaxy with views:
edge-on (left), face-on (center), and bulge (right). After decomposition the method de-
tected two components, one that defines a galactic disk (center) and another with orbits
featuring properties that define a component like a little bulge (right). The distribution
in time of the circularity parameter (Figure 3.9) shows again that the galaxy is mainly a
disk though it has a low mass bulge which is evident in the distribution close to  = 0,
all the galaxies in this experiment have the same mass per particle, then the galaxy DL
has less particles than galaxy D, then in the distribution of  for DL it is notorious the
48 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

peak associated to little bulge. This shows that both our method of decomposition works
well in galaxies with high and low mass, then our method can be used in disk galaxies at
different redshift.

10
Initial detected disk Initial detected disk Initial detected bulge

-5

-10
10
Detected disk after 2 Gyr Detected disk after 2 Gyr Detected bulge after 2 Gyr

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10

Figure 3.8: (left) Initial stellar component, (center) disk selected and (right) bulge se-
lected.

If the initial conditions also include a bulge, e.g. with 50% of disk mass (galaxy D5) like
in Figure 3.10, which shows the initial stellar component (left), selected disk (center) and
bulge with our method, the  distribution shows two peaks (Figure 3.11 (left) solid line)
due to motion of particles in a spherical potential well of the bulge. Our decomposition
detected the two components (dashed lines) corresponding to the peaks around zero and
one, the histogram for each component is shown in Figure 3.11 (left) with dashed lines.
It is evident that our method find the particles that produce each distribution peak, the
peak around zero shows a bulge and the peak around one shows a disk. The detected
bulge is a mixture between particles of the initial bulge and particles from the disk that
after the numerical relaxation start to move inside a spherical potential. [Abadi 2003]
and [Scannapieco 2009] respectively reported similar results with their hydrodynamical
simulations, which are currently validated through age-metallity analysis, thanks to their
inclusion of a gaseous component and barionic physics.
The initial conditions really produces particles with kinematics that do not correspond to
those of disk particles, our method detect these mixing particles and they are removed
from the disk. Table 3.2 shows the proportions of mixing particles for the tested iso-
lated galaxies with particles. It is clear that the mixing particles are small for the initial
conditions where the bulge has less than 50% of disk mass (mixing of less or equal than
3.2. RESULTS 49

0.07
0 Gyr
1 Gyr
2 Gyr
0.06

0.05
Frequency

0.04

0.03

0.02

0.01

0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
ε

Figure 3.9: Histogram of the circularity parameter for an isolated disk in the time, the
histogram shows that the galaxy is essentially a disk in the time, this is an evidence of the
dependable of the algorithm to generate the initial conditions.

5% of the disk mass), this ensures the reliability of the algorithm to generate the initial
conditions for our galaxies.

Galaxy Bulge-Disk mass ratio (%) Mixing (%)

D0 10 5
D1 14 4
D2 22 2
D3 30 0
D4 37 3
D5 45 5
D6 52 8
D7 59 11
D8 66 14
D9 73 17

Table 3.2: Bulge-Disk mass ratio for the test galaxies with the number of satellites in the system.
50 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS

10
Stellar component Detected disk Detected bulge

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 3.10: (left) Initial stellar component, (center) disk selected and (right) bulge se-
lected for a galaxy with a bulge of 40% of the disk mass.

3.2.2 Implementation in Galaxies Interacting with Satellites

When a disk galaxy is in process of merging with satellite galaxies, particles from the
satellites are unbound from the satellite and become part of the host galaxy, this new
particles should be taken into account to study the evolution of all galactic components
such that the new particles enrich the dynamics and population of the host galaxy.
Figure 3.11 (right) shows the distribution of epsilon for the system, remember that the
criterion is applied to particles up to 10 kpc from the center of the galaxy, in this range of
distances there are particles coming from the satellite but now belong to the disk, when
this particles are not relaxed with the disk can have “strange” orbits producing points just
closer to zero in the distribution. After the selection with our method this points disappear,
which means that the method rejected these particles and detected without problems the
disk and the bulge of the system. In Figure 3.11 (right) dashed lines shows that particles
coming from the satellites with “strange” orbits are not included in disk or bulge after
decomposition and do not appear in their distributions. When the new particles are relaxed
with the disk, they will be taken into account as disk particles. The final components are
shown in Figure 3.12 where it is clear that particles only kinematically belong to the disk
or bulge are included.

3.3 Conclusions
We have presented a method to make disk-bulge decomposition in N-body simulations.
This method is useful to detect disks in wide ranges of mass and it’s able to detect particles
of the stellar component that do not have a dynamic behavior proper of particles moving
into a gravitational potential with cylindrical symmetry, it also easily decomposes galaxies
whose stellar component are a mixture disk-bulge. Our decomposition allows us to study
3.3. CONCLUSIONS 51

0.45
Stellar component Stellar component
0.4 Detected disk Detected disk
Detected bulge Detected bulge
0.35

0.3
Frequency

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 -1
1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
ε ε

Figure 3.11: (left) distribution of the circularity parameter for a disk with bulge (solid
line), the dashed lines are the histograms for the components after separation. (right)
distribution for a galaxy with bulge and interacting with satellite galaxies, the peak in
zero are particles from satellites with strange orbits respect to the galactic disk.

the properties of the disk with minimum noise from others components of the galaxy.
The results of the components separation for a galaxy in interaction with satellites are
not altered by the presence of satellite particles, this particles which become part of the
disk are taken into account for its analysis. particles close to the disk but with “strange”
kinematics are not taken into account and passed to be part of a particles remnant that can
be become part of the disk in later times.

10
Stellar component Detected disk Detected bulge

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 3.12: (left) Initial stellar component in interaction, (center) disk selected and
(right) bulge selected.
52 CHAPTER 3. FINDING DISK IN SIMULATIONS
Chapter 4
Evolution of Disk Galaxies in ΛCDM
from z = 2 until Today

In this chapter we present a description of the galactic disks evolution study in a cosmo-
logical context. We reproduced the main minor mergers that affect the evolution of the
candidate halos to Milky Way galaxy in a constrained simulation, and observed their im-
plications in the survival and evolution of the disks contained on it. The information about
mergers is extracted from cosmological simulations of dark matter structures formation
(CLUES). We re-run these simulations including only stars and dark matter as will be ex-
plained hereinafter. We don’t include major mergers in our simulations because they do
not define the fine structure of the disk, also this interactions are very strong and mostly
destroy disks. We found that satellite-to-host mass ratio less than 16% likely preserve the
disk and this will survival to the impacts with satellites, and that the initial orientation of
the disk influence in the results of interactions with satellite galaxies.
The formation and evolution problem of disk galaxies, and particularly the study of de-
tailed aspects of their appearance, characteristic structure, matter distributions, chemical
evolution, dynamics, etc. has not been resolved to date. We are interested in understand-
ing the shapes and behavior of disk galaxies today in their cosmological context.

4.1 Method
We used the merger trees from a cosmological simulation to reproduce the more impor-
tant minor mergers from redshift two of to candidates to type Milky Way halos. In our
simulations each halo contains a disk according its properties, we studied the evolution
and survival of disks in interaction with satellites. Onwards, we will give a detailed de-
scription of our method and its applications.

CLUES
The cosmological simulations that we used to extract the merger trees were those of the
CLUES project. The CLUES project (http://clues-project.org Constrained Local Uni-
versE Simulations) is a set of numerical simulations of the evolution of the local universe.

53
54 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

CLUES simulates small boxes containing dark matter particles designed to represent the
observed Local Universe [Gottloeber2010 ]; i.e, the local cosmic web with its main mem-
bers such as the Local Supercluster, the Virgo cluster, the Coma cluster, the Great At-
tractor and the Perseus-Pisces supercluster. CLUES has some disadvantages, for example
they do not directly constrain the sub-megaparsec scale structure, still they perform a
simulation at this scales within cosmological environment of CLUES. Additionally, their
random origin restrict the predictive power of the simulations. However, Such simula-
tions provide a very attractive possibility of simulating objects with properties close to
the observed LG and located within the “correct” environment.
The initial conditions for CLUES were generated with the implementation of the Hoffman-
Ribak algorithm which sets up the simulations with random Gaussian fields according to
observational data inside an uniform mesh of 2533 particles. The observational measures
extracted were: radial and peculiar velocities from a set of catalogs, and with X-ray data
from clusters of nearby galaxies to estimate the lineal over-density, this restricts the sim-
ulations to scales larger than ≈ 5h−1 Mpc. All the initial conditions produced the main
characteristics of the LG: Local Supercluster, Virgo cluster, Coma cluster and Great At-
tractor. The smaller scales of the Local Universe are more sensible to the constrains and
are basically random.
200 simulations were performed using the code GADGET2 with 64 processors and 2T
bytes of RAM of the HLRB2 Altix supercomputer during ≈ 10 hours of watch time. The
cubic box of the universe simulated has a length of 64h−1 Mpc, from all simulations were
selected those with a candidate to LG with its main characteristics and with halos like
MW and M31, only three realizations containing a LG were selected.
Each realization was resimulated with a resolution of 10243 particles inside a box of
643 h−1 Mpc with a resolution able to define halos like dwarf galaxies in the Local Uni-
verse. One of the candidates is resimulated two more times with resolutions equivalent
to 40963 particles, one of them only with particles representing dark matter and the other
one with hydrodynamical simulation including gas to a ratio of gas-to-dark matter mass
1:5 by particle. In both simulations the resolution is higher in a sphere of 2h−1 Mpc with
center in the Local Group, outside this region the resolution is lower; to avoid false effects
due to the mixture of resolutions the simulation starts in z = 100.

Analysis of Mergers Trees

The identification of halos in CLUES, as is detailed in [Forero-Romero 2011], uses the
algorithm of friends-of-friends (FOF) with a linking length b = 0.17 for identifying dark
matter halos without substructure. A halo is defined as an object with at least 20 particles,
then it is included in the catalog and considered for the construction of its merger tree,
thus the minimal resolution for halo mass is M min = 3.78 × 108 h−1 M . The halo mass
for candidates to MW is ≈ 1 × 1012 h−1 M with ≈ 5 × 104 particles. A merger is defined
as the moment at which two halos are overlapping by the first time, but not because of the
physical fusion of an accreted subhalo.
A merger tree is a register of all halos whose merger in the time lead to the formation
of a halo at z = 0. The merger trees are built by comparing the halos produced by FOF
in two consecutive snapshots of the simulation. The possible progenitors of a halo G are
4.1. METHOD 55

Figure 4.1: One of three candidates to Local Universe from CLUES. Image extracted
from http://www.clues-project.org/images/darkmatter.

those that share at least 13 particles with it, all descendants of each possible progenitor are
sought, if the possible progenitor gives two-thirds of its particles to G, then it is confirmed
as progenitor of G. This procedure is performed for each halo found with FOF.
The candidates to Local Group are those sets of halos that defining a coordinate system
in the possible Local Supercluster and Virgo cluster in z = 0, satisfying that their two
candidates to MW and M31 agree with the following conditions:

• The distance between the centers of the halos is smaller than 0.7h−1 Mpc ([Ribas 2005]).

• The relative radial velocity of the two galaxies is negative.

• There must not be objects more massive than either of the LG halos throughout a
radius of 2h−1 Mpc from each object ([Tikhonov 2009]).

• There must not be a halo of mass > 5.0 × 1013 h−1 M in a radius of 5h−1 Mpc with
respect to each halo center ([Karachentsev 2004]).

Figure 4.1 shows one of three candidates realizations of the Local Universe from CLUES,
with dark regions for low density of particles and bright for high density, we observe the
local cosmic web obtained with CLUES. In Figure 4.2 there is an example of a merger
56 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

tree for a halo, the higher red circle is the halo at z = 0, down the scheme red circles
connected with lines represent the fusion of halos where the central halo is the resulting
halo from the fusion, lines built with red circles are halos that are not suffering mergers.

Figure 4.2: Example of a merger tree found with FOF algorithm ([Sanes 2010]).

Selection of Minor Mergers

For the goals of this research we need to select the minor mergers from the merger trees
of the candidates to MW that exert more influence on the structure and evolution of these
halos which will host a stellar galactic disk as is explained below. We don’t establish a
mass ratio to define a minor merger, we simply search mergers in the merger trees from
redshift two to zero under the assumption that within this interval of time galaxies don’t
experience major mergers, the method of selection of minor mergers is explained below.

In the Figures 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 we show the evolution of characteristic quantities of the
three candidates halos to MW from CLUES computed from merger trees for the time
interval of z = 2 to z = 0, each color correspond to each candidate. In one hand, Figure
4.3 shows the evolution of the virial radius for candidates, the increasing of the halos
size is quiet in time, then is not useful to define some relevant minor merger; alike, the
virial mass (Figure 4.4) of the galaxies is quiet too, only one of the candidates increase
its mass significantly between z ∼ 1.8 and z ∼ 1. The virial masses and radii are
4.1. METHOD 57

not useful to select the main minor mergers because of their very slow behavior do not
produce significant effects on the galaxy. On the other hand, in Figure 4.5 appears the spin
parameter of the halo, alterations in this quantity are produced by minor mergers; then,
strong changes in the rotation of the halo mark the most representative minor mergers
in the evolution of the galaxy. We selected the three minor merges that affect most the
rotation of the halo to reproduce their interactions with the stellar disk which will be
hosted in each halo.

Figure 4.3: Virial radius for the three candidates to Milky Way, through all the evolution
of the halo size is quiet.

Figure 4.4: Virial mass for the three candidates to Milky Way, only one of the candidates
increases its mass significantly between z ∼ 1.8 and z ∼ 1.

4.1.1 Initial Conditions for our Simulations

Once we selected the minor mergers to reproduce their interactions with the candidates
to MW, we used the Mo model ([Mo 1998]) to build a stellar galactic disk in the halo
candidates to MW, the mass of the disk stellar component is defined with the redshift via
Moster model [Moster 2010]. In Mo model properties of each disk are: mass, radial scale
length and spin are defined according to properties of its host halo, this ensures that the
simulated disk will be the “true” disk to be formed inside the halo in a “real” universe.
58 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

Figure 4.5: Spin parameter of the halo, alterations in this quantity are produced by minor
mergers; then, strong changes in the rotation of the halo mark the most representative
minor mergers in the evolution of the galaxy.

Mo’s model considers that the disk mass is a fraction of halo mass md and that the disk
spin is jd times that of the halo. With the halo parameters: mass, the radius where the
density of the halo is 200 times the critical density of the universe r200 , the circular veloc-
ity in r200 (V200 ), the halo concentration c = r200 /rs , (being rs the scale length of the dark
matter halo) and the spin parameter λ, the global structure of the disk is defined through
the scale length Rd , its mass distribution Md (r) and the angular momentum Jd via the
equations 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 respectively.
 
1 jd
Rd = √ λr200 fc−1/2 fR (λ, c, md , jd ), (4.1)
2 md
   
r −r/Rd
Md (r) = Md 1 − 1 + e , (4.2)
Rd
Z r200 /Rd
Vc (Rd u)
Jd = Md Rd V200 e−u u2 du, (4.3)
0 V200
where Vc is the circular velocity and

c 1 − 1/(1 + c)2 − 2ln(1 + c)/(1 + c)

fc = , (4.4)
2 [c/(1 + c) − ln(1 + c)]2
Z ∞ −1
−u 2 Vc (Rd u)
fR (λ, c, md , jd ) = 2 e u du , (4.5)
0 V200
Then, we always build the disks that cosmologically correspond to disks that would be
formed in each host halo; thereby, changes in the dark matter halo are translated into
changes in the stellar disk, this is the cosmological context for the evolution of disk galax-
ies in our simulations. Moreover, since the goal of this chapter is to study the evolution
and stability of the disks, we need to start our simulations with the right disk, cosmolog-
ically speaking, but additionally stable disks, thus any effect over the structure and the
survival of the disk will be caused only by minor mergers. To guarantee that the initial
disks were stable we used a Hernquist mass distribution for the halo, the reason is that a
4.1. METHOD 59

more realistic distribution like NFW was not useful since its distribution diverges, then
the solution for a stable Mo disk is difficult to reach, then the disks are not numerically
and dynamically stable in the time, this is illustrated in Figure 4.6 where the disk forms
a structure like a bar when it is simulated in isolation; as we shall see later, this does not
happen when a finite halo distribution like Hernquist profile is used.

Figure 4.6: Unstable disk generated with a distribution of dark matter type NFW.

Once we have a stable disk we need to configure the initial conditions for minor mergers.
This initial conditions are built adding the three satellites previously selected from the
analysis of the merger trees to a system with the host halo candidate to MW containing
its disk. As we previously saw, the mass, position and velocities of theses satellites are
extracted from CLUES for those that perturb too the spin parameter of the halo. As
each galaxy is generated with position and velocity of the center of mass, then all the
coordinates and velocities of the particles that belong to the satellites are translated with
the following relations

~rp = ~rpi − ~rclues , (4.6)

~vp = ~vpi − ~vclues , (4.7)

where ~rpi and ~vpi are the initial position and the velocity of the i-particle of any galaxy
from the system, ~rp and ~vp are the final position and the velocity of the i-particle, and
~rclues and ~vclues are the initial position and velocity of the center of mass of each galaxy
according to CLUES results, then the host galaxy (MW) is held at the origin while the
satellites have relative positions and velocities respect to it. Thereby, the fall of the satel-
lites in to the host galaxy is at the origin as shown the Figure 4.7 where the red points are
60 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

Figure 4.7: Example of a disk (red points) at the origin and three satellites (black points)
fall in it.

the disk with its center of mass close to the center of coordinates and the black points are
three satellites falling to the disk.
Our procedure to set the initial conditions for minor mergers also include rotations of
involved galaxies; for example, we can rotate the disk galaxy of the set using the Euler’s
rotation matrices such that the disk angular momentum L ~ disk coincides with any vector
~ in <3 whose angle with XY plane is α and β with YZ plane, as is illustrated in Figure
L
4.8. The first rotation is π/2 around x-axis, so L~ disk is on positive y-axis, then a second
rotation of α around z-axis, and finally, a rotation around x-axis an angle β, the rotation
operation are shown in 4.1.1, Figure 4.9 shows the three steps of a disk rotation, the
coincidence between vectors L ~ disk and L.
~

 0     
x 1 0 0 cos α sin α 0 1 0 0 x
y 0  = 0 cos β sin β  − sin α cos α 0 0 cos π/2 sin π/2  y  ,
z0 0 − sin β cos β 0 0 1 0 − sin π/2 cos π/2 z

As we are interested in the effect of the disk initial inclination on the consequences of
the fall of satellites on it, then each disk is configured two times with different initial
orientations satellites fall, the first, one parallel to the angular momentum of the host dark
matter halo, and other one parallel to the angular momentum of the system of satellites,
this is detailed in the next sections and it’s performed with a code in C language (as all
codes used in this work and available in http://code.google.com/p/diskstructure/) called
configure merger.

Our Method Advantages

Although our simulations does not contain gas, which was not included in order to im-
prove the resolution of the simulations as well as the computing time, we have certain
4.1. METHOD 61

Figure 4.8: Disk angular momentum parallel (L ~ disk ) to z-axis (blue vector), the disk will
~
rotate such that Ldisk coincides with an arbitrary vector L.~

Initial orientation

30

20

10
Z[kpc] 0

-10
30
-20 20
10
0 Y[kpc]
-30-30 -10
-20 -10 -20
0 10
X[kpc] 20 30 -30

Final orientation

30

20

10
Z[kpc] 0

-10
30
-20 20
10
0 Y[kpc]
-30-30 -10
-20 -10 -20
0 10
X[kpc] 20 30 -30

Figure 4.9: Disk angular momentum parallel (L ~ disk ) to z-axis (blue vector), the disk will
~
rotate such that Ldisk coincides with an arbitrary vector L.~

advantages that make our results relevant for the studying of the disk galaxies evolution
in ΛCDM. The three advantages of our method can be summarized as follows:

• Independent simulations analysis of CLUES lead to three candidates halos to form

a possible “Milky Way” in a “Local Group” to z = 0 without requiring arbitrary re-
62 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

Initial orientation - YZ First rotation - YZ

Second rotation - XY Third rotation - YZ

Figure 4.10: Projection on XY and XZ planes for the final disk in the two orientations for
the same galactic system. (left) orientation 1 and (right) orientation 2.

strictions in the fusion history of the halos as in previous works ([Scannapieco 2009],
[Kazantzidis 2008], [Martig 2012]).

• From a hydrodynamic re-simulation of one of candidates to Milky Way is known

that really inside this halo is formed a disk that remains to z = 0 [Gottloeber2010 ].

• Our initial conditions for the disks are generated using the [Mo 1998] model to build
consistent disks with their “real” cosmology context, this ensures that the evolution
of the disk is performed in “natural” cosmology conditions until z = 0.

4.2 Our Experiments

In order to understand the role of the minor mergers in the galactic disk evoluiton we
designed two experiments. The first one is the influence of mergers at different stages of
the evolution of the disk. To do so we take different times along the history of growth
of the galaxy to build the disk and start the mergers at that times, remember that in Mo
model the disk is generated based in host halo properties at any instant of time, thereby
if the halo properties change in the time the disk will be different in each time. Then, we
will study the influence of satellite-to-host mass ratio in the evolution and survival of the
disk. The second one, consists in to study the effect of the initial orientation of the disk
in the final result of the minor mergers. We use two initial orientations for the disk; one,
4.2. OUR EXPERIMENTS 63

where the disk angular momentum is parallel to the angular momentum of its dark matter
halo, and other where the disk angular momentum is parallel to the initial orbital angular
momentum of the set of satellite galaxies respect to the center of the host galaxy. All the
mergers were ran during 5 Gyr even if we are interested only in the two first Gyr.
Before to run the mergers, we built the disk in the host galaxy and simulated it in isolation
during 10 Gyr. The first 2 Gyr to observe that initial disk for the mergers was numeri-
cally and dynamically stable, and the rest of the time to observe the evolution of the disk
without the satellites perturbations, this help us to see that all the changes in the disk
structure are produced by the merger with the satellites. Onwards, this simulations are
called control simulations, and the configuration of the mergers are performed with the
disk corresponding to time of 2 Gyr of control simulations.
Table 4.1 contains the simulated disks in isolation, i.e, the control simulations. The table
control indicates that the simulation is a control simulation, the tag C indicates the candi-
date halo to MW C1, C2 or C3 corresponding to the three candidates from CLUES, and
R indicates the initial redshift correspond the simulation of its merger. Each simulation is
run during 5 Gyr to ensure its stability before merger, all the disks used to configure the
mergers are the corresponding to the snapshot of its control simulation in 2 Gyr.

Candidate Simulation Initial time (redshift)

C1 controlR1C1 1.84
C1 controlR2C1 1.63
C1 controlR3C1 1.45
C1 controlR4C1 0.75
C1 controlR5C1 0.59
C2 controlR1C2 1.95
C2 controlR2C2 1.63
C2 controlR3C2 0.272
C3 controlR1C3 1.27
C3 controlR2C3 1.21
C3 controlR3C3 1.09
C3 controlR4C3 0.988
C3 controlR5C3 0.081

Table 4.1: The simulations table of isolated disks. The columns are: 1. Identifier to the candidate
halos to MW C1, C2 or C3; 2. Identifier to the simulations control indicates that the simulation is
a control simulation, the tag C indicates the candidate halo to MW C1, C2 or C3 corresponding
to the three candidates from CLUES, and R indicates to which initial redshift correspond the
simulation of the merger; 3. Initial redshift of the simulation of the merger.

As explained above, the control snapshot in 2 Gyr is configured to merger with the satel-
lites. These simulations are run during 5 Gyr, as spatial dimensions of the simulations are
of the size of the host halo all simulations are run in physical coordinates where the dom-
inant interaction is gravity. The table 2.3 contains simulations of minor mergers, where
merger indicates that the simulation is a merger, R and C indicate the same as in isolated
simulations, and o indicates the two initial orientations of the disk, oh is an orientation
such that the disk angular momentum is parallel to the angular momentum of the dark
64 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

matter halo, os is other where the disk angular momentum is parallel to the initial orbital
angular momentum of the set of satellites galaxies respect to the center of the host galaxy.
In the last column of the table we show the satellite-to-host mass ratio for the more mas-
sive satellite of the system, we used percents of this mass ratio from 0.4% to 98%. In
Table 4.3 we show masses and numbers of particles for halo, disk, and satellites used in
each merger.

Candidate Simulation Satellite-to-host Mass Ratio

C1 mergerR1C1oh 0.29
C1 mergerR1C1os 0.29
C1 mergerR2C1oh 0.26
C1 mergerR2C1os 0.26
C1 mergerR3C1oh 0.16
C1 mergerR3C1os 0.16
C1 mergerR4C1oh 0.03
C1 mergerR4C1os 0.03
C1 mergerR5C1oh 0.01
C1 mergerR5C1os 0.01
C2 mergerR1C2oh 0.04
C2 mergerR1C2os 0.04
C2 mergerR2C2oh 0.009
C2 mergerR2C2os 0.009
C2 mergerR3C2oh 0.004
C2 mergerR3C2os 0.004
C3 mergerR1C3oh 0.98
C3 mergerR1C3os 0.98
C3 mergerR2C3oh 0.77
C3 mergerR2C3os 0.77
C3 mergerR3C3oh 0.80
C3 mergerR3C3os 0.80
C3 mergerR4C3oh 0.07
C3 mergerR4C3os 0.07
C3 mergerR5C3oh 0.01
C3 mergerR5C3os 0.01

Table 4.2: Simulations table of merging disks. The columns are: 1. Identifier to the candidate
to MW C1, C2 or 3; 2. Identifier to the simulations where merger indicates that the simulation
is a merger, R and C indicate the same as in isolated simulations, and o indicates the two initial
orientations of the disk, oh is an orientation such that the disk angular momentum is parallel to the
angular momentum of its the dark matter halo, os is other where the disk angular momentum is
parallel to the initial orbital angular momentum of the set of satellites galaxies respect to the center
of the host galaxy. 3. Satellite-to-host mass ratio for the more massive satellite of the system.

All simulations are performed with N-body code GADGET3 ([Springel 1998]), because,
as we will see later, the number of particles in each simulations is high and GADGET3
works well with allocation of memory for systems with a high number of particles. After
4.3. DISK STRUCTURE ANALYSIS 65

Simulation Mhalo /Nhalo Mdisk /Ndisk MsatI /NsatI MsatII /NsatII MsatIII /NsatIII
mergerR1C1oh 35.1/556477 0.07/11147 10.3/163585 6.1/96810 6.2/98340
mergerR2C1oh 35.6/356221 0.08/14082 9.8/155906 6.8/107880 5.05/80160
mergerR3C1oh 63.2/998125 0.26/40582 10.4/164935 7.1/112081 2.7/43350
mergerR4C1oh 129.0/2024458 1.5/234170 4.0/63598 1.6/25410 0.7/11760
mergerR5C1oh 125.7/1970073 1.5/242940 1.5/23999 0.97/15540 0.8/12209
mergerR1C2oh 46.4/731377 0.4/56010 1.8/28170 0.5/8460 0.5/7290
mergerR2C2oh 58.02/910722 0.6/100363 0.5/8310 0.3/4680 0.2/4020
mergerR3C2oh 71.4/1105339 1.8/279933 0.2/4080 0.2/3960 0.1/1920
mergerR1C3oh 27.2/428105 0.2/28794 26.7/423366 7.0/111181 3.1/49019
mergerR2C3oh 35.6/562179 0.3/51903 27.4/434644 3.2/50399 2.7/42659
mergerR3C3oh 35.2/553197 0.3/54648 28.4/450121 6.1/97350 2.9/45389
mergerR4C3oh 53.0/829301 0.7/117834 3.9/62218 3.1/49079 0.9/13710
mergerR5C3oh 104.6/1613525 2.9/461386 1.4/21900 0.8/13350 0.4/5670

Table 4.3: Table of the simulations of merging disks with initial direction oh. The columns are:
1. Identifier to the simulations. and columns 2, 3, 4 ,5 and are the mass and number of particles
for halo, disk, and the three satellites, respectively. The unit of mass is 1010 M . This quantities
are the same for disks with initial orientation os.

many test simulations the input parameters for gadget that worked best are listed in Ta-
ble 4.4, for details on these parameters see GADGET User Manual ([Springel 1998] &
[Springel 2005b]). The internal units system that we used for the simulations is defined
in 4.5.
Parameter Value
ErrTolIntAccuracy 0.01
CourantFac 0.15
MaxSizeTimestep 0.01
MinSizeTimestep 1.0e-8
ErrTolTheta 0.5
TypeOfOpeningCriterion 1
ErrTolForceAcc 0.001
TreeDomainUpdateFrequency 0
PartAllocFactor 5.5
BufferSize 300 M bytes
SofteningHaloMaxPhys 0.3
SofteningDiskMaxPhys 0.14
MaxRMSHisplacementFac 0.2
GravityConstantInternal 0

Table 4.4: Table of GADGET3 parameters, , for datails on these parameters see GADGET User
Manual ([Springel 1998] & [Springel 2005b]).

4.3 Disk Structure Analysis

In this section we present our method to analyze the disk structure evolution, we will
describe all the procedures used to compute the properties associated to the morphology
and dynamical structure of the disk.
66 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

Unit Value Equivalent

Length unit in cm 3.085678 × 1021 1 kpc
Mass unit in g 1.989 × 1043 1010 M
Velocity unit cm/s 105 1 km/sec

Table 4.5: Units system used for the simulations.

Before to analyze the disk we change its orientation such that the disk mid-plane coincides
with the XY-plane. The disk is orientated two times through of its angular momentum L,
in the first rotation, around the x-axis, is such that the L y-component becomes zero, and L
is over XZ-plane. And the second rotation, around y-axis, is such that the L x-component
becomes zero, in this way the angular momentum vector is all over z-direction.
Using snapshots from the simulations, we do analyze how the disk structure was affected
with each passage of the satellites. The first is to determine what particles of the system
are really forming the disk, for which we used the procedure discussed in the Chapter 3 to
find the galactic components, and once identified the disk we used a set of procedures to
study the structure and stability of them. Following the theory of disk dynamics studied in
Chapter 2, we computed the vertical and surface density profiles, the velocities dispersion
in the coordinates x, y and z, the median gravitational potential, the epicycle frequency
and the Toomre parameter for the disk as a function of the radius. Now we give a brief
description of how we computed this quantities, for more specific information about the
codes go to the web http://code.google.com/p/diskstructure/. All computations are made
with data snapshots type GADGET format 1.

Vertical Density
To calculate the vertical density profile we fit the vertical distribution to the profile
 
A 2 z−B
σ(z) = sech , (4.8)
z0 z0
where A, B y z0 are the fit parameters and z0 is the vertical scale length of the disk. The
vertical density is computed as σz = m/l as a function of z for the n vertical bins, being l
the length of the bin and m the mass in that interval. The error for the estimation
p of σz (z)
is the error in the particles count, if a bin has Npart particles the error is Npart /l.

Surface Density
The surface density profile of a galactic disk is computed with a fit to the profile

Md −R/h
Σ(R, z) = e , (4.9)
4πh2
where Md , and h are the fit parameters, Md is the diak mass and h is the radial scale
length for the disk. We use n logarithmic bins to detect important changes in the density
when it is calculated in the transition region from the center to the outer of the disk, the
4.3. DISK STRUCTURE ANALYSIS 67

surface density is calculated as Σ(R) = m/A, where A ispthe area of the interval and m
is the mass in it. If the bin has Npart particles the error is Npart /A.

Velocity Dispersion
In the velocity dispersion computation in cylindrical coordinates for the disk we build n
logarithmic bins, in each interval we compute the median speed in each coordinate v¯R , v¯ψ
and v¯z , thereby
Npart
1 X
v̄i = vij , i = R, ψ, z (4.10)
Npart j=0

If an interval has Npart particles, the velocity dispersion for the interval is computed as
Npart
1 Xq
σi = (vij − v̄i )2 , i = R, ψ, z. (4.11)
Npart − 1 j=0

Gravitational Potential
We compute the mean gravitational potential as a function of the cylindrical radius for
particles of a galactic disk, we use the gravitational potential φi for each particle from
the output of GADGET3 which is calculated with the use of a tree method. We build
n logarithmic bins, if the bin has Npart particles the mean gravitational potential φ̄ is
computed as
Npart
1 X
φ̄ = φi . (4.12)
Npart i=0

Epicyclic Frequency κ
Epicyclic frequency is computed as a function of the cylindrical radius of a galactic
disk. This computation requires the gravitational potential φ(R), thereby the potential
is smoothed, after computing the first and second logarithmic derivatives with respect to
the logarithmic cylindrical radius (this is for getting an smoother derivate) the epicyclic
frequency is computed as follows

3 dφ(R) 1 d2 φ(R)
κ2 (R) = + , (4.13)
R2 d(log R) R d(log R)2

Toomre Parameter
Toomre parameter is computed as a function of the cylindrical radius in the epicyclic
approximation, this parameter gives insight about whether the disk is stable or not when
suffering radial perturbations. This calculation requires the calculations of the surface
68 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

density profile Σ(R), the epicyclic frequency κ(R), and the radial velocity dispersion
σR (R) computed with the above methods.
Being G the gravitational constant the Toomre parameter is defined as 4.14. Remember
that when Q > 1 the disk is stable and survives to radial perturbations.

σR (R)κ(R)
Q= , (4.14)
3.36GΣ(R)
The disk analysis of all our simulations is made with the computation of these properties,
then the evolution of the properties is interpreted as the evolution of the disk in time.

Isolated disk
The initial conditions were simulated in isolation during 10 Gyr (control simulations) to
verify that the disk is stable and ensure that the changes of its structure or destruction are
due to the interaction with the satellites.

10
isolated isolated

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10

Figure 4.11: Stable isolated disk, (left) projection on XZ-plane, (right) projection on XY-
plane.

Figure 4.11 shows the projections of the disk XZ (left) and XY (right) planes for the
disk after 10 Gyr of evolution in isolation, it is clear that the disk holds its initial structure
without substructures such as bars, rings, arms, etc. This is also evident in the figures of
analysis. The distribution of the circularity parameter shows (Figure 4.12 top-left) that the
galaxy does not produce structures like bulges in the time due to instabilities in the disk,
in the Figure 4.12 (top-right) appears the surface density profile in the time, the profile is
approximately invariant and the scale parameters change as expected for a disk relaxing
numerically; additionally, there is no evidence of heating in any direction as shows the
velocity dispersion (Figure 4.12 (bottom-left)); the disk stability is guaranteed, the Toomre
4.3. DISK STRUCTURE ANALYSIS 69

Histogram epsilon - MMP 0.988 2710 control Surface profile - MMP 0.988 2710 control
0.09 10-1
0 Gyr 0 Gyr - h=1.93 - zo=0.43
1 Gyr 1 Gyr - h=1.95 - zo=0.42
0.08 2 Gyr 2 Gyr - h=1.98 - zo=0.48
3 Gyr - h=2.02 - zo=0.51
4 Gyr - h=2.04 - zo=0.53
0.07 5 Gyr - h=2.05 - zo=0.56

Log10(Σ [1010Msol/Kpc])
0.06 10-2
Frequency

0.05

0.04

0.03 10-3

0.02

0.01

-4
0 10
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 0 2 4 6 8 10
ε R[kpc]

Dispersion - MMP 0.988 2710 control t = 5 Gyr Q - MMP 0.988 2710 control
1.8 10
σR 0 Gyr
σφ 1 Gyr
σz 2 Gyr
1.7 9
3 Gyr
4 Gyr
5 Gyr
1.6 8
Log10(σR,σφ,σz [kpc/Gyr])

1.5 7
Q

1.4 6

1.3 5

1.2
4

3
1.1 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
0 2 4 6 8 10
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.12: (top-left) The distribution of the circularity parameter for isolated disk, (top-
right) is the surface density profile in the time, (bottom-left) velocity dispersion, and
Toomre parameter in (bottom-right).

parameter has a quiet variation and always satisfies the stability criterion (see Figure 4.12
(bottom-right)). As mentioned above, this stability is achieved using a Hernquist dark
matter distribution since more real distributions like NFW make it difficult to build stable
disks since they are divergent.
Once the initial setup for the merger simulations is ready, the simulations were run with
GADGET3 during 5 Gyr, remember that the simulations have the cosmological context
in the structure of the disk, the velocities and positions of the satellites, and also the
simulation scale is on the order of the galactic size, then the simulations are in physical
coordinates. The realizations don’t include gas but have a large mass resolution, thereby
we could resolve structures of the disk like bulges, bars, rings, warps, etc. The mass
resolution for dark matter particles was 6.3 × 10−5 and 6.3 × 10−6 for particles of disk
and satellites, respectively.
70 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

4.4 Effects that Could Favor Disk Survival

With the stable isolated disks after 2 Gyr, we use the tool configure merger to build the
setup of minor mergers simulations generating new initial conditions and these are run
during 5 Gyr. Each candidate to MW is simulated several times at different times along
the growth history of the galaxy, or alike, the different satellite-to-host mass ratio and two
initial orientations of the disk for studying their influence on the evolution of the disk as
we explained before. Hereinafter, we show the experiments performed with the disks and
their results.
Before continuing with the results, it is worth to remember that when there are disks inter-
acting with satellites the plots of the circularity parameter exhibit peaks at zero after 2 Gyr
of simulation, this is not evidence of a bulge formation, the peaks appear due to satellites
particles dynamics that become part of the disk (temporally) while the interaction occurs
as outlined in chapter 3.

4.4.1 The Initial Orientation

The first phenomena we studied is the effect of the initial inclination of the disk on the
final results of the interaction with the satellites. We configured the same initial conditions
but with two different orientations for the disk, in one of them the direction of the disk
angular momentum is parallel to the direction of the orbital angular momentum of the
satellites system (orientation os), and in the second one the direction is parallel to the
initial angular momentum of its halo (orientation oh). These directions produce changes
in the gravitational effects from the disk on the satellites, then gravitational torques on the
satellites are changed too, because the distribution of mass that interact with the satellites
has not the same orientation in both cases.
Figure 4.13 shows the distance of each satellite respect to the disk center in the time, to
the left is the trip of the satellites for the orientation oh, and to the right the pass with the
orientation os, the black dashed horizontal line marks three times the disk scale length
for each disk. The different orientations change the depth of the satellites impact, being
more notorious for the satellites that pass closer to the disk core (red lines), although
the difference is small, produces a different final morphology of the disk like in Figure
4.14. This Figure shows projections in XY and XZ planes for the final disk in the two
orientations (orientation oh to the left and os to the right) for the same galactic system, it
is evident that the disk has different final vertical and surface structures, at first glance, in
this case the orientation oh leads to a disk vertically thicker than the orientation os, also
final arm is not the same for both, being more clear-cut for the orientation oh.
The distribution of  does not show significant difference between the galactic components
of each galaxy (see Figure 4.15), thereby for this case, the initial disk inclination does not
determine structures formation like bulges or bars, but can influence the formation of less
massive sub-structures like arms or warps as is notorious to naked eye in figure 4.14. But
the heating of the disk (Figure 4.16) is greater for the orientation os, this is due to the
transference of angular momentum between satellites and the disk is maximum which
perturb more the disk. The above result are also supported by Figures 4.17 and 4.18,
where clearly the dynamical evolution of the disk is different for each orientation being,
4.4. EFFECTS THAT COULD FAVOR DISK SURVIVAL 71

Orientation oh Orientation os

Size disk Size disk

200 SMMP SMMP
TMMP TMMP
FMMP FMMP
150
r[kpc]

100

50

0
0 1 2 3 4 5
0 1 2 3 4 5
t[Gyr] t[Gyr]

Figure 4.13: Distance of each satellite respect to the center of the disk in the time, to the
left is the pass of the satellites for the orientation oh and orientation os (right).

in cases where the disk are destroyed initial orientation os helps to a faster and violent
destruction than initial orientation oh; and the Toomre parameter ensures the survival of
the disk in both cases, but with lower values orientation oh holds a disk less perturbed by
the interaction with the satellites.
These results are consistent with works like ([Libeskind 2007] & [Libeskind 2011]) where
though analysis of the evolution of halos in the Local Universe from CLUES they observe
that different directions of satellites infall to the galaxy may affect of different manner the
disk evolution and some directions can favor the disk survival.

4.4.2 Mass Ratio Satellite-Disk

In this section we study the influence of the mass ratio satellite-to-host (SH) on the disk
survival. We set disks to simulate in runs starting at different values of redshift, this is
because the mass of the disk stellar component is defined with the redshift via Moster
model ([Moster 2010]). When SH is large its destructive power is large too, because the
disk suffers more damage by impacts since the transference of lineal and angular momen-
tum can be stronger, this damage is evident in all analysis quantities. Figure 4.19 shows
the projections of XY and XZ planes, to the left is the final projection for a survival disk
(low SH ≈ 0.07), to the right a disk with larger SH ≈ 0.3, the last one is destroyed by
the collision with the satellites. The disk destruction is because of massive satellites im-
pacts with larger SH which heat it enough. In Figure 4.20 appears the velocity dispersion
for two disks, one with low SH (left) and another with large SH (right), it is evident that
as larger SH heats a lot the disk in all directions generating larger perturbations on the
distribution of the velocity dispersions, this leads to disk destruction.
The disk destruction is also observed in its matter distribution, in Figure 4.21 appears the
surface density for the two previous disks, clearly the impacts with low SH satellites do
72 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

10
Orientation oh Orientation os

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
10
Orientation oh Orientation os

5
Y[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 4.14: Projection on XY and XZ planes for the final disk in the two orientations for
the same galactic system. (left) orientation oh and (right) orientation os.

not alter a lot of disk matter distribution (left), in contrast, larger SH disturbs all the disk
structure (right), in the figure for surface density profile is calculated and fitted only in
times where the structure behaves like an exponential law, this disk is destroyed after 2
Gyr.
The great impacts disturb enough the disk such that the Toomre parameter is not useful
to study its stability. This is shown in Figure 4.22 where, for the survival disk returns a
Toomre parameter expected for a supported by rotation disk, but larger SH heats too the
disk and epicyclic approximation is not applicable. Then, minor mergers with low SH
generate little disturbing in the disk due to the low mass of the satellite compared with the
disk, thereby the disk is more disturbed when the satellite mass is large compared with
the disk because the transference of lineal and angular momentum is higher, this result
4.4. EFFECTS THAT COULD FAVOR DISK SURVIVAL 73

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 0.988 2710 os

0.2
0 Gyr 0 Gyr
1 Gyr 1 Gyr
2 Gyr 2 Gyr
0.15 3 Gyr 3 Gyr
4 Gyr 4 Gyr
frequency

5 Gyr 5 Gyr
0.1

0.05

0
-0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
ε ε

Figure 4.15: Circularity parameter for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right).

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 0.988 2710 os

2
σR σR
1.8 σφ σφ
Log10(σR,σφ,σz [kpc/Gyr])

σz σz
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0 2 4 6 8 10
0 2 4 6 8 10
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.16: Velocity dispersion for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right).

is consistent with results of [Kazantzidis 2008] and [Martig 2012] where it was evident
that the satellites that most affect the disk structure are those with large SH. Based in
our simulations the percent satellite-to-host mass ratio most beneficial to disk survival are
those less than 16%, more larger the disk suffers great perturbations and likely will be
destroyed.
74 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 0.988 2710 os

0.1
t=0 Gyr - h=1.95 - zo=0.42 t=0 Gyr - h=1.95 - zo=0.42
t=1 Gyr - h=1.96 - zo=0.46 t=1 Gyr - h=1.97 - zo=0.46
t=2 Gyr - h=2.02 - zo=0.57 t=2 Gyr - h=2.05 - zo=0.52
t=3 Gyr - h=2.10 - zo=0.63 t=3 Gyr - h=2.01 - zo=0.58
t=4 Gyr - h=2.07 - zo=0.67 t=4 Gyr - h=2.04 - zo=0.60
t=5 Gyr - h=2.08 - zo=0.70 t=5 Gyr - h=2.07 - zo=0.66

0.01
Log10(Σ [1010Msol/Kpc])

0.001

0.0001
0 2 4 6 8 10
0 2 4 6 8 10
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.17: Surface density profile for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right).

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 0.988 2710 os

10
t=0 t=0
t= 1 Gyr t= 1 Gyr
8 t= 2 Gyr t= 2 Gyr
t= 3 Gyr t= 3 Gyr
t= 4 Gyr t= 4 Gyr
6 t= 5 Gyr t= 5 Gyr
Q

0
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.18: Toomre paramter for the two orientations, oh (left) and os (right).

4.5 Conclusions
In conclusion, an interacting disk with satellites of low mass is more likely to survive than
those with satellites of larger masses, as the transferences of lineal and angular momentum
4.5. CONCLUSIONS 75

10
Survival NOT Survival

5
Z[kpc]

-5

-10
10
Survival NOT Survival

5
Y[kpc]

-5

-10
-10 -5 0 5 -10
10 -5 0 5 10
X[kpc] X[kpc]

Figure 4.19: (left) Disk survival view XZ-XY, (right) Disk not survival XZ-XY.

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 1.84 10909 oh

2
σR σR
1.8 σφ σφ
Log10(σR,σφ,σz [kpc/Gyr])

σz σz
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0 2 4 6 8 10
0 2 4 6 8 10
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.20: Velocity dispersion for a disk that survives (left) and does not survive (right)

are greater in last case, and this increases the destructive power of the satellites. In general,
any passing of the satellite close to the disk alters its structure and heats the disk, which
eventually leads to the formation of galactic substructures such as bulges, bars, warps, etc.
Satellite-to-host mass ratio less than 16% likely preserve the disk and this will survive to
the impacts.
Also we found that the initial orientation of the disk influence in the results of interactions
with satellite galaxies; particularly, an initial orientation where the disk is parallel to the
76 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 1.84 10909 oh

0.1
t=0 Gyr - h=1.95 - zo=0.42 t=0 Gyr - h=1.33 - zo=0.48
t=1 Gyr - h=1.96 - zo=0.46 t=1 Gyr - h=1.15 - zo=0.43
t=2 Gyr - h=2.02 - zo=0.57 t=2 Gyr - h=1.18 - zo=0.51
t=3 Gyr - h=2.10 - zo=0.63 t=3 Gyr - h= - - zo= -
t=4 Gyr - h=2.07 - zo=0.67 t=4 Gyr - h= - - zo= -
t=5 Gyr - h=2.08 - zo=0.70 t=5 Gyr - h= - - zo= -

0.01
Log10(Σ [1010Msol/Kpc])

0.001

0.0001
0 2 4 6 8 10
0 2 4 6 8 10
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.21: Surface density profiles for a disk that survives (left) and doesn’t survive
(right)

merger 0.988 2710 oh merger 1.84 10909 oh

10 200
t=0 t=0
t= 1 Gyr t= 1 Gyr
8 t= 2 Gyr t= 2 Gyr
t= 3 Gyr t= 3 Gyr 150
t= 4 Gyr t= 4 Gyr
t= 5 Gyr t= 5 Gyr
6
100
Q

50
2

0 0
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
R[kpc] R[kpc]

Figure 4.22: Toomre parameter for a disk that survives (left) and doesn’t survive (right)

initial orbital angular momentum of the satellites set leads to stronger perturbations than
those where the disk has a initial orientation parallel to the angular momentum of its dark
matter halo, this is because in the first orientation the transference of angular momentum
4.5. CONCLUSIONS 77

from satellites to the disk is maximum, then the disk get more heat from the infalling
satellites.
Our results are complementary with those of [Kazantzidis 2008] and [Martig 2012], al-
though we didn’t isolated disk galaxies for our work, we did use the “real” cosmological
environment supplied by the cosmological simulations (CLUES), where the galaxy is
evolving as does its cosmology context and we used it to build the disk and initialize the
satellites fall.
78 CHAPTER 4. DISK GALAXIES IN ΛCDM
Chapter 5
Bulge to Disk Mass Ratio

In this chapter we study the effects of the bulge-to-total mass ratio (B/T) on the dynamics
of the galaxy via z-velocity dispersion (σz (R)) and the mass surface density Σ(R). We
found a relation between the ratio σz (R)/Σ(R) and the maximum vertical height of disk
stars as a function of the cylindrical radius, also appears a relation between the maximum
inclination of disk particles and B/T. We apply our method to numerical galaxies with dif-
ferent B/T. For each model we build curves of σz /(RΣ) vs. σz /Σ for different cylindrical
radius, we named these curves classification curves, galaxies with the same B/T produce
similar classification curves in the region of the disk, this behavior may be detected with
observations and can work as an indirect measure of bulge-total mass ratio.

5.1 Introduction
In current scenario, models of galaxy formation cosmology must be able to explain the
rich morphology observed in galaxies. For instance, in the galactic zoo is necessary ex-
plain the variety of bulges detected in disk galaxies: galaxies with classical bulges as
result of major mergers appear [Weinzirl 2009], [Fisher 2009], boxy/peanut bulges are
believed to be the result of vertical resonances and buckling instabilities in bars and pseu-
dobulges from secular evolution of the disk due to gas inflow in the internal regions of
the galaxy [Weinzirl 2009]. all this kind of bulges are defined by their photometric and
kinematic properties, but in some galaxies this properties are mixed in bulges, implying
that bulges can be product of different formation mechanisms.
Seeking to understand the formation of disk galaxies in a hierarchical model of struc-
tures formation in a ΛCDM paradigm, to determine the scale length of the bulge and the
bulge-to-total mass ratio, allows to link the properties of the bulge with the morphological
properties of the disk in the Hubble sequence [Martinet ], [Noguchi 1999], [Maller 2006],
[Yoshino 2008], [Fisher 2009], [Oohama 2009], [Weinzirl 2009], this will shed light on
the galactic evolution process and the formation of the galactic bulge.
Nowadays, generally the methods to find B/T consist in fitting the luminosity profile of
the bulge to a Sérsic type and through the assumption of a mass-luminosity relation M/L
for the bulge and disk getting B/T for the galaxy [Fisher 2009], [Weinzirl 2009]. The
methods based on the above idea might not be very accurate since they assume that the

79
80 CHAPTER 5. BULGE TO DISK MASS RATIO

bulge luminosity profile has a behavior like Sérsic type, the results can also be affected by
the stellar extinction, central point sources such as AGN’s, the inclination of the galaxies
and the presence of a central bar.
This chapter presents a new method to compute B/T via classification curves, these curves
could be determined with observations of the central regions of the galaxies and provide
an indirect measure of the bulge-to-total mass ratio of the galaxy.

5.2 Model
Motivated by N-body simulations of isolated stellar disks we found a relation between
the bulge-to-disk (B/T) mass ratio and the maximum inclination for orbits of the disk
particles respect to galactic mid-plane (αmax ). We take different numerical galactic disks
with the same mass but with different bulge mass and measure the maximum inclinations
of disk particles, this inclinations are shown in Figure 5.1 where large values of B/T lead
to lower maximum orbit inclinations, this is because the growth of the bulge depens on the
gravitational potential well of the disk particles and decreases the z-velocity dispersion,
then the orbits become less inclined. It is indicated that by determining the maximum
inclination of the disk stars it is possible to estimate the ratio B/T for the galaxy, which
will be useful for observations of galaxies if we get a mathematical expression for αmax
as a function of observationally measured amounts as luminosities, velocity dispersions,
densities profiles, etc.
In order to obtain an expression between observational quantities and αmax we start from
the disk epicyclic approximation. In that approximation stars, while completing an orbit,
describe two simple harmonic motions in radial and vertical directions, with angular fre-
quency κ and ν respectively. The vertical frequency of the stars is related to the amplitude
of the motion and therefore with the inclinations of the stellar orbits, and is defined as

∂ 2 Φ(R, z)
 
2
ν ≡ , (5.1)
∂z 2 (R,0)

Φ is the total gravitational potential which is calculated considering a thick disk with
a given vertical density profile. The vertical equation of motion for particles will be
z̈ = −νz with solution

z = A sin(νt + ϕ), (5.2)

ż = Aν cos(νt + ϕ), (5.3)

where A is the amplitude of vertical motion with initial phase ϕ. Using 5.2 , 5.3 and that
vertical total energy for a simple harmonic motion is Ez = 21 A2 ν 2 = 12 żmax
2
(żmax is the
maximum speed of the particle), z and ż are related as

2Ez − ż 2
z2 = . (5.4)
ν2
5.2. MODEL 81

75

70

65

60

55
αmax

50

45

40

35

30
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
B/T

Figure 5.1: Maximum inclination of stars orbits as a function of B/T. Larger B/T produces
smaller inclinations of the orbits for galactic disks with the same mass but with different
bulge mass.

Seen edge-on, for a star with position (R, z) the instantaneous inclination of its orbit
respect to the horizontal line is α = tan−1 (z/R) (see), using 5.4 the inclination is related
to the vertical frequency and the maximum speed of the orbit as
p !
ż 2 − ż 2
max
α = tan−1 , (5.5)
Rν

star

z
Galactic mid-plane
R
Figure 5.2: Inclination of a star for a galaxy seen edge-on.

then, the maximum inclination for the orbit occurs when ż is zero at the turning points,
thereby
 
−1 żmax
αmax = tan . (5.6)
Rν
82 CHAPTER 5. BULGE TO DISK MASS RATIO

Now αmax is a function of ν and żmax . As the velocity dispersion is related to the maxi-
mum velocity in each component, then for any radius σz defines a maximum z-velocity,
Figure 5.3 shows three realizations for the same disk galaxies without gas but with B/T
= 0.05, 0.2 and 0.4, the points correspond to values of żmax and σz measured in radial
bins, each set of points of different color shows the relationship between żmax and σz for
each disk, all galaxies show a direct proportionality between this two quantities. In the
hand, the above connection leads to link the maximum inclinations of the orbits with the
z-velocity dispersion (see 5.7). On the other hand, the relation between żmax and σz is
approximately the same for the three galaxies, this means that żmax is independent of the
bulge-total mass ratio and depends only on the velocities distribution function.
σ 
z
αmax ∝ tan−1 . (5.7)
Rν

600
B/T = 0.05
B/T = 0.2
B/T = 0.4
500

400
VZmax

300

200

100

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
σz(R)

Figure 5.3: Maximum z-velocity as a function of σz . Clearly żmax is directly proportional

to σz and independent of B/T.

With radial bins is calculated the surface density Σ(R) and using numerical derivatives of
the gravitational potential the vertical frequency ν. In Figure 5.4 it is clear that the vertical
frequency for our three realizations depends on the mass distribution of the galaxy, and
particularly on the disk density profile Σ(R, z), this result shows that ν is increasing when
bulge-to-disk mass ratios are larger, the effect of B/T on the galaxy is expected as outlined
below. Any gravitational potential can be calculated as
5.2. MODEL 83

35000
B/T = 0.05
B/T = 0.2
B/T = 0.4
30000

25000

20000
ν

15000

10000

5000

0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035
Σ(R)

Figure 5.4: The vertical frequency of the disk vs. the mass surface density, the effect of
B/T is stronger for outer radii of the galaxies.

Z
ρ(r)
Φ(r) = −G dr’ , (5.8)
| r’ − r |
where Φ is evaluated in r and ρ(r) is matter distribution, but the density ρ(r) could be
written as the product of two factors ρ(r) = f (M )F (r), F (r) is a factor that depends
only on the position and is the functional form of the matter distribution, and f (M ) is
a factor of normalization and dimensionality that contains along with scale factors, the
total mass of the distribution, for example, the Hernquinstś potential of the form Φ(r) =
−GM/(r + a) can be written as the product of f (M ) = GM and F (r) = −1/(r + a),
being G and M the gravitational constant and the total mass of the distribution, and a its
scale length. With this factorization the gravitational potential and its second derivative
with respect to z are
Z
F (r)
Φ(r) = −Gf (M ) dr’ , (5.9)
| r’ − r |

∂ 2 Φ(r) ∂2
Z 
F (r)
= −Gf (M ) dr’ , (5.10)
∂z 2 ∂z 2 | r’ − r |
However, the potential of the galaxy is the sum of the potentials from bulge, disk and dark
84 CHAPTER 5. BULGE TO DISK MASS RATIO

matter halo 5.11

Φ(R, z) = ΦB (R, z) + ΦD (R, z) + ΦH (R, z), (5.11)

and each of them could be expressed according to 5.9. for a exponential disk of the form
5.12 where R and z are in cylindrical coordinates; j0 is a normalization constant, Σ(R) =
e−R/Rd is the surface brightness distribution for a face-on disk, and λ(z) = sech2 (z/2z0 )
is the vertical brightness distribution for a face-edge disk, where Rd and z0 are the radial
and vertical scale length respectively; the factor F contains the surface density and this
ensures a dependence between ν and Σ(R) via 5.1. Thus the maximum inclination for the
disk is related with Σ(R) as in 5.13

j(R, z) = j0 Σ(R)λ(z), (5.12)

σ 
z
αmax ∝ tan−1 . (5.13)
RΣ
Also, the factor f contains the mass of each component (bulge, disk and halo), then
the second derivative of the potential computed from 5.10 contains the total mass of the
components, these terms in the equation can be rearranged such that ν defined as 5.1
is directly proportional to bulge-to-disk mass ratio B/T (ν 2 ∝ B/T ) and therefore the
maximum inclinations also depends on B/T .
The above ideas suggest that via observations of σz and Σ it would be possible to estimate
B/T, this relation is produced because B/T affects the surface density and the vertical ve-
locity dispersion and then affects the inclinations of stellar orbits due to its effect over the
stars vertical frequency. The curves in Figure 5.5 show σz /(RΣ) vs. σz /Σ where σz (R)
and Σ(R) are computed for radial bins. Each color corresponds to galaxies with different
B/T (= 0.05, 0.2 and 0.4), for each value of B/T we build the curve for three galaxies with
different masses (curves of the same color), this curves we called classification curves.
Large B/T leads to curves flattened at radii smaller than the length scale because σz is
smaller for this galaxies due to their deeper gravitational well. Then with observational
measures of the z-velocity dispersion and surface density for central regions of the disk
is possible, via classification curves 5.5 type, to determine the bulge-to-disk mass ratio
(B/T ) of the galaxy.

5.3 Results and discussion

We found that the bulge mass influences the dynamics of disk stars modifying their or-
bits. Then, with an analytical results we intuit that larger bulge-to-total mass ratio lead to
disk with stars in less inclined orbits and developed a method via classification curves to
calculate B/T computing σz (R) and Σ(R) in central regions of the disk galaxies.
We apply our method to different numerical galaxies for which we computed the obser-
vational quantities σz (R) and Σ(R) for radial bins and build classification curves, each
B/T produce different curves, and galaxies with different masses but with the same B/T
produce the same type of curves (see Figure 5.5), these curves can be determined in the
observations and could be used to estimate the bulge-to-total mass ratio of the galaxy.
5.4. CONCLUSIONS 85

100000
B/T = 0.05
B/T = 0.2
B/T = 0.4

10000
σ/(RΣ)

1000

100
100 1000 10000 100000
σ/Σ

Figure 5.5: σz /(RΣ) vs. σz /Σ, where σz (R) and Σ(R) are calculated for radial bins.
Each color corresponds to galaxies with different B/T (= 0.05, 0.2 and 0.4), for each
value of B/T we build the curve for three galaxies with different masses (curves of the
same color). Through observational measures of the z-velocity dispersion and surface
density for radii close to the length scale of the disk is possible, via classification curves,
to determine B/T.

Galaxies with the same B/T but with different structure produce a characteristic set of
curves at 5.5 type graphics. Identifying this set of curves for several B/T will be useful
for observers to characterize galaxies within, e.g. a Hubble sequence.

5.4 Conclusions
Disk galaxies with different bulge-to-disk mass ratio produce different inclinations of the
stars, if B/T is greater the gravitational potential well is deeper and the dispersion of
velocities is less, then the maximum inclinations for a radius is less too. This leads to a
directly dependency between αmax and B/T via 5.13 through the observable quantities
σz (R) and Σ(R).
Our method to estimate the bulge-to-disk mass ratio disk indirectly uses the maximum
inclinations of the orbits as a function of the cylindrical radius via the z-velocity disper-
sions and surface density. This method is fully applicable to the observations if these are
searching B/T .
86 CHAPTER 5. BULGE TO DISK MASS RATIO
Chapter 6
Conclusions

We present a method to find particles belonging to a stellar disk in simulations that do

not include a gaseous component. We work on a kinematic criteria to detect stars belong-
ing to the galactic disk or bulge. The method does not require photometric or metallicity
analysis. Our method is tested on initial conditions of galaxies with and without bulge
composed only of dark matter and stars. Particles of bulge and disk are generated sepa-
rately, then mixed, and finally separated again with our method.
The results of the separation of components for a galaxy in interaction with satellites are
not altered by the presence of satellites particles, this particles that become part of the
disk are taken into account for its analysis; on the contrary, particles close to the disk but
with kinematics different from that of the disk are not taken into account and pass to be
part of a remnant of particles that can become part of the disk in later times.
This method is useful to detect disks in wide ranges of mass and it is able to detect
particles of the stellar component that do not have a dynamical behavior proper of particles
moving into a gravitational potential with cylindrical symmetry, it also easily decompose
galaxies whose stellar component is a mixture disk-bulge. Our decomposition allows us
to study the properties of the disk with minimum noise from others components of the
galaxy.
We reproduced the main minor mergers that affect the evolution of the candidate to Milky
Way like halos and observed their implications in the survival and evolution of the disks
hosted by them. The information about mergers is extracted from cosmological simu-
lations of dark matter (CLUES) and these simulations are run only with stars and dark
matter. We do not include major mergers in our simulations because they do not preserve
the fine structure of the disk, also this interactions are very strong and mostly destroy
disks.
An interacting disk with satellites of low mass is more likely to survive than those with
satellites of larger masses, as the transference of lineal and angular momentum are larger
in last case, and this increases the destructive power of the satellites. In general, any
passing of the satellite close to the disk alters its structure and heats the disk, which
eventually leads to the formation of galactic substructures such as bulges, bars, warps, etc.
Satellite-to-host mass ratio less than 16% likely preserve the disk and this will survive to
the impacts.

87
88 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS

Also we found that the disk initial orientation influence in the results of interactions with
satellite galaxies; particularly, an initial orientation where the disk is parallel to the initial
orbital angular momentum of the satellites set leads to stronger perturbations than those
where the disk has an initial orientation parallel to the angular momentum of its dark
matter halo, this is because in the first orientation the transference of angular momentum
from satellites to the disk is maximum, then the disk get more heat from the infalling
satellites.
Our results are complementary with those of [Kazantzidis 2008] and [Martig 2012], al-
though we did not isolate disk galaxies for our work, we did use the “real” cosmological
environment supplied by the cosmological simulations (CLUES), where the galaxy is
evolving as does its cosmology context and we used it to build the disk and initialize the
fall of satellites.
Aditionally, we study the effects of the bulge-to-total mass ratio on thedynaics of disk
galaxies via z-velocity dispersion (σz (R)) and the surface density of mass Σ(R). We
found a relation between the ratio σz (R)/Σ(R) and the maximum vertical height of disk
stars as a function of the cylindrical radius, also appears a relation between the maximum
inclination of disk particles and B/T. We apply our method to numerical galaxies with dif-
ferent B/T. For each model we build curves of σz /(RΣ) vs. σz /Σ for different cylindrical
radius, we named these curves classification curves.
Disk galaxies with different bulge-to-disk mass ratio produce different inclinations of the
stars, if B/T is larger the gravitational potential well is deeper and the dispersion of
velocities is less, then the maximum inclinations for a radius is less too. This leads to a
directly dependency between αmax and B/T via 5.13 through the observable quantities
σz (R) and Σ(R).
Our method to estimate the bulge-to-disk mass ratio disk indirectly uses the maximum
inclinations of the orbits as a function of the cylindrical radius via the z-velocity disper-
sions and surface density. This method is fully applicable to the observations if these are
searching B/T .
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