"The evolution of galaxies via mergers" by Chanda J. Jog, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Galaxy interactions and mergers are common and lead to a significant morphological and dynamical evolution of galaxies. The following main results from our work will be highlighted in this talk. The analysis of 2MASS data for an unbiased sample of Arp mergers has shown the surprising result that half the sample galaxies show spiral-like luminosity profiles. This means that the disk survives the merger. However, these have elliptical-like kinematics where the main support is from pressure. N-body simulation studies have been done and these show that these peculiar, hybrid systems arise from mergers of unequal-mass galaxies in the novel mass range 10:1-4:1. These are more likely to occur than the major mergers usually studied. Further, N-body simulations of successive minor mergers are shown to result in the formation of elliptical galaxies.

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