This is the astro-ph blog of the Theoretical Modelling of Cosmic Structures group (TMoX) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. We are an independent Max-Planck Research Group focusing on the various aspects in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Part of our focus is on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, super-massive black holes, the formation of the first structures in the universe and the enrichment history of the Universe. We are theoreticians using analytic modelling as well as numerical simulations in our work.

The CosmologyCake blog is dedicated to the discussion of research papers and current developments. We will regularly post interesting papers and comment on them. Feel free to leave your comments as well. We encourage authors of discussed papers to post replies if they wish to. Our aim is to provide a platform to discuss recent astro-ph papers within a wider audience. Please feel free to send papers you would like to be discussed to us at tmoxgroup@googlemail.com.

24 February 2012

The origin of disks and spheroids in simulated galaxies.

Sales et al. 2011 (MNRAS Submitted)

In this paper (link) the authors review the possible mechanisms to form disks in simulated galaxies and argue that the main mechanism responsible for disk formation is hot cooling gas. This is against previous works who found cold streams to be responsible for disk formation.

2 comments:

  1. the authors use different selection criteria for simulated galaxies. In
    particular, they check for stellar-mass profiles and say that their
    profiles agree with a de Vacoulers profile. My main concern is: the de
    Vacoulr's profiles deals with galaxy luminosity, so, why comparing it to
    stellar-mass profiles? (stellar mass and luminosity do not scale linearly)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The authors state that the different components of their simulated
    spheroids have misaligned spins. But, shouldn't the spins in spheroids be
    also "very small" rather than simply mis-aligned?

    ReplyDelete