Scalable N-body code for the modelling of early-type galaxies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable N-body modeling code tailored for early-type galaxies, capable of reproducing observed photometry and kinematics, and demonstrates its application on real galaxy data.

Contribution

It generalizes previous N-body methods to include integral-field spectroscopic data, improving galaxy modeling accuracy.

Findings

Successfully modeled NGC 3377's photometry and kinematics.

Demonstrated the code's ability to reproduce observed galaxy structures.

Provided preliminary insights into early-type galaxy dynamics.

Abstract

Early-type galaxies exhibit a wealth of photometric and dynamical structures. These signatures are fossil records of their formation and evolution processes. In order to examine these structures in detail, we build models aimed at reproducing the observed photometry and kinematics. The developed method is a generalization of the one introduced by Syer and Tremaine (1996), consisting in an N-body representation, in which the weights of the particles are changing with time. Our code is adapted for integral-field spectroscopic data, and is able to reproduce the photometric as well as stellar kinematic data of observed galaxies. We apply this technique on SAURON data of early-type galaxies, and present preliminary results on NGC 3377.