‘Fundamental Plane’-like relations from collisionless stellar dynamics: a comparison of mergers and collapses

We present a new set of dissipationless N-body simulations aiming to better understand the pure dynamical aspects of the “Fundamental Plane” (FP) of elliptical galaxies. We have extended our previous hierarchical merger scheme by considering the Hernquist profile for the initial galaxy model. Two-component Hernquist galaxy models were also used to study the effect of massive dark halos on the end-products characteristics. We have also performed new collapse simulations including initial spin. We found that the one-component Hernquist mergers give results similar to those found for the one-component King models, namely both were able to build-up small scatter FP-like correlations with slopes consistent with what is found for the near-infrared FP of nearby galaxies. The two-component models also reproduce a FP-like correlation, but with a significantly steeper slope. This is in agreement with what has been found for elliptical galaxies at higher redshift (0.1 < z < 0.6). We discuss some structural properties of the simulated galaxies and their ability to build-up FP-like correlations. We confirm that collapses generally do not follow a FP-like correlation regardless of the initial spin. We suggest that the evolution of gradients in the gravitational field of the merging galaxies may be the main ingredient dictating the final non-homology property of the end products.