Determining properties of the Antennae system - Merging ability for restricted N-body

TL;DR

This paper enhances a restricted N-body simulation approach with mass-loss and NFW halos to better model the major merger of the Antennae Galaxies, aiding in understanding their interaction parameters.

Contribution

It introduces improvements to the restricted N-body code, including mass-loss and NFW halos, for more accurate modeling of major galaxy mergers.

Findings

Improved modeling of the Antennae Galaxies merger.

Inclusion of mass-loss and NFW halos enhances simulation accuracy.

Better reproduction of observed merger features.

Abstract

Motivated by the closest major merger, the Antennae Galaxies (NGC4038/4039), we want to improve our genetic algorithm based modeling code Minga (Theis 1999). The aim is to reveal the major interaction and galaxy parameters, e.g. orbital information and halo properties of such an equal mass merger system. Together with the sophisticated search strategy of Minga, one needs fast and reliable models in order to investigate the high dimensional parameter space of this problem. Therefore we use a restricted N-body code which is based on the approach by Toomre & Toomre (1972), however with some refinements like consistent orbits of extended dark matter halos. Recently also dynamical friction was included to this code (Petsch 2007). While a good description for dynamical friction was found for mass ratios up to q = 1/3 (Petsch & Theis 2008), major merger systems were only imperfectly remodeled. Here we show recent improvements for a major merger system by including mass-loss and using NFW halos.