A new fitting-function to describe the time evolution of a galaxy’s gravitational potential

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
e-mail: buist@astro.rug.nl

Received: 15 November 2013
Accepted: 19 January 2014

Abstract

We present a new simple functional form to model the evolution of a spherical mass distribution in a cosmological context. Two parameters control the growth of the system and this is modelled using a redshift-dependent exponential for the scale mass and scale radius. In this new model, systems form inside out and the mass of a given shell can be made never to decrease, as generally expected. This feature makes it more suitable for studying the smooth growth of galactic potentials or cosmological halos than other parametrizations often used in the literature. This is further confirmed through a comparison to the growth of dark matter halos in the Aquarius simulations.