Searching for nuclear stellar discs in simulations of star cluster mergers

TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations to explore the formation of nuclear stellar discs in galaxy centers, demonstrating that star cluster mergers can produce observable disc-like structures consistent with real galaxies.

Contribution

It shows that nuclear stellar discs can form from star cluster mergers and validates the Scorza-Bender method for detecting such structures in simulated and real data.

Findings

One simulation produced a NSD with observed properties.

Another simulation showed an elongated structure without NSD signatures.

The Scorza-Bender method is effective for identifying disc structures.

Abstract

The nuclei of galaxies often host small stellar discs with scale-lengths of a few tens of parsecs and luminosities up to 10^7 Lsun. To investigate the formation and properties of nuclear stellar discs (NSDs), we look for their presence in a set of N-body simulations studying the dissipationless merging of multiple star clusters in galactic nuclei. A few tens of star clusters with sizes and masses comparable to those of globular clusters observed in the Milky Way are accreted onto a pre-existing nuclear stellar component: either a massive super star cluster or a rapidly rotating, compact disc with a scale-length of a few parsecs, mimicing the variety of observed nuclear structures. Images and kinematic maps of the simulation time-steps are then built and analysed as if they were real and at the distance of the Virgo cluster. We use the Scorza-Bender method to search for the presence of disc structures via photometric decomposition. In one case the merger remnant has all the observed photometric and kinematic properties of NSDs observed in real galaxies. This shows that current observations are consistent with most of the NSD mass being assembled from the migration and accretion of star clusters into the galactic centre. In the other simulation instead, we detect an elongated structure from the unsharp masked image, that does not develop the photometric or kinematic signature of a NSD. Thus, in the context of searches for a disc structure, the Scorza-Bender method is a robust and necessary tool.