Effect of gas percentage during minor mergers on the star formation in galaxies

Abstract We study the effect of minor mergers on star formation using simulations. We use GADGET4 code which has both collisionless and hydrodynamical particles. Our goal is to establish a relation between gas percentage present in the galaxies and the star formation in the merged galaxy. We use 1:10 minor mergers and we run the isolated simulations with varying gas percentages in the primary galaxy. We observe that the gas particles convert into stars due to the impact of the minor merger. As the gas percentage increases in the primary disk of the galaxy, more number of stars are formed. We also observed that newly formed star particles settle down in the disk of the primary galaxy and increase the thickness of the disk. We also observe that the thickness of the stellar disk containing the old stars also increases due to the impact of the merger.