Chemodynamical evolution of interacting galaxies: the GalMer view

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive set of simulations of galaxy interactions and mergers, exploring their chemodynamical evolution across different galaxy types, orbits, and initial conditions, providing a valuable statistical tool for understanding these complex processes.

Contribution

It introduces a large, diverse library of about 900 galaxy interaction simulations, incorporating various galaxy types, orbits, and physical processes, to study their chemodynamical evolution.

Findings

Simulations reveal diverse morphological and chemical evolution patterns.

Statistical analysis of interactions highlights key factors influencing galaxy evolution.

The dataset serves as a benchmark for future studies of galaxy mergers.

Abstract

We have undertaken a large set of simulations of galaxy interactions and mergers (GalMer Project) in order to study the physical processes related to galaxy encounters. All morphological types along the Hubble sequence are considered in the initial conditions of the two colliding galaxies, with varying bulge-to-disk ratios and gas mass fractions. Different types of orbits are simulated, direct and retrograde, according to the initial relative energy and impact parameter. The self gravity of stars, gas and dark matter is taken into account through a tree-code algorithm, the gas hydrodynamics through SPH. Star formation is included adopting a density-dependent Schmidt law. This wide library of galaxy interactions and mergers, containing, at present, about 900 simulations of major encounters, represents an unique tool to investigate statistically the chemodynamical evolution of interacting systems. In the following, we present and discuss some results obtained exploring the dataset, together with some future perspectives.