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| Paper: |
The Central kpc of Galaxy Bulges |
| Volume: |
249, The Central Kiloparsec of Starbursts and AGN: the La Palma Connection |
| Page: |
140 |
| Authors: |
Balcells, Marc |
| Abstract: |
We study the innermost regions of bulges with surface-brightness data derived from combined HST/NICMOS and ground-based NIR profiles. Bulge profiles to 1--2 kpc may be fit with Sersic laws and show a trend with bulge-to-disk ratio: low-B/D bulges are roughly exponential, whereas higher-B/D bulges show increasing Sersic shape index, n, indicating higher peak central densities and more extended brightness tails. N-body models of the accretion of satellites onto disk--bulge--halo galaxies show that satellite accretion contributes to the increase of the shape index, n, as the bulge grows by accretion. The N-body results demonstrate that exponential profiles are fragile to merging, hence bulges with exponential surface-brightness profiles cannot have experienced significant growth by the accretion of dense satellites. |
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