Dynamics of rotating elliptical galaxies

Flavio De Lorenzi, Victor Debattista, Ortwin Gerhard
Astronomical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland


We present preliminary results from an ongoing study on rotation in triaxial elliptical galaxies. We first construct a self-consistent N-body model of a rotating triaxial galaxy. Using a newly implemented adaptive particle method, we then attempt to build an non-rotating model with the same density and projected velocity and dispersion maps. We then compare the kinematic data including higher order moments (h3 and h4) in an attempt to distinguish between the rotating and nonrotating models.