Observations indicate that much of the interstellar gas in merging galaxies may settle into extended gaseous disks. Here, I present simulations of disk formation in mergers of gas-rich galaxies. Up to half of the total gas settles into embedded disks; the most massive instances result from encounters in which both galaxies are inclined to the orbital plane. These disks are often warped, many have rather complex kinematics, and roughly a quarter have counter-rotating or otherwise decoupled central components. Disks typically grow from the inside out; infall from tidal tails may continue disk formation over long periods of time.
Reprints of this article are available electronically as gzipped
postscript or PDF
files. Blackwell Science requires the following notice to accompany
these links:
This is an electronic version of an article published in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: complete citation
information for the final version of the paper, as published in the
print edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is
available on the Blackwell Science Synergy online delivery service,
accessible via the journal's Website at: http://www.blacksci.co.uk/MNR
Gzipped postscript preprints of this paper are also available with low
resolution figures or high
resolution figures.
Last modified: June 27, 2002