Origin of galactic bulges, the evolution of groups, and the distribution of Abell clusters
Various dynamical topics connected with the origins of galaxies and large scale structure were studied. In Chapter 1 the hypothesis that galactic bulges are simply ellipticals modified by the gravitational field of exponential disks is tested with N-body experiments and an analysis of S. Kent's data-set. The author concludes that, unless disks have improbably low M/L ratios, bulges were not ellipticals; disk fields should produce significant effects, but generally in the wrong direction to explain the differences between bulges and ellipticals. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 explore the evolution of groups of galaxies under the general assumption that galaxies possess massive halos. A sequence of increasingly realistic techniques are employed, culminating in an extensive series of large direct-summation N-body simulations. It is shown that groups of halo-galaxies evolve rapidly, the galaxies becoming segregated at the center of the system. This induces a systematic bias in the observed virial parameters, underestimating the total mass of the system, which may account for the relative M/L ratios of groups and rich clusters, and for the general trend of M/L with scale size between approx.0.1 and approx.1.0 Mpc. Groups with apparent crossing times of approx.0.1 H/sub 0//sup -1/ have probably only just collapsed and are rapidly evolving toward multiple-merger systems. Chapter 5 compares the clustering statistics of rich clusters in N-body simulations with recent observations for Abell clusters. It was found that models with significant power on large scales, such as the cold particle models have the best chance of accounting for the observations.
- Research Organization:
- California Univ., Berkeley (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6368200
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
POST-MERGER SIGNATURES OF RED-SEQUENCE GALAXIES IN RICH ABELL CLUSTERS AT z {approx}< 0.1
Structure and formation of cD galaxies: NGC 6166 in Abell 2199