Luminosity Profiles of Merger Remnants

Using published luminosity and molecular gas profiles of the late-stage mergers NGC 3921, NGC 7252 and Arp 220, we examine the expected luminosity profiles of the evolved merger remnants, especially in light of the massive CO complexes that are observed in their nuclei. For NGC 3921 and NGC 7252 we predict that the resulting luminosity profiles will be characterized by an r^{1/4} law. In view of previous optical work on these systems, it seems likely that they will evolve into normal ellipticals as regards their optical properties. Due to a much higher central molecular column density, Arp 220 might not evolve such a ``seamless'' light profile. We conclude that ultraluminous infrared mergers such as Arp 220 either evolve into ellipticals with anomalous luminosity profiles, or do not produce many low-mass stars out of their molecular gas complexes.Comment: Final refereed version. Note new title. 4 pages, 2 encapsulated color figures, uses emulateapj.sty. Accepted to ApJL. Also available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~jhibbard/Remnants/remnants.htm

Non-Gaussianity from two right-handed sneutrino curvaton decays

In this paper, we consider the effect of two right-handed sneutrino curvaton decays and investigate the parameter space. We compare the difference of the result between single- and two-curvaton cases. We find one Yukawa coupling of the right-handed snetrinos can be as large as $\lambda \sim 0.1$ while the other one is much smaller which is consistent with the idea that only one generation of the neutrino mass may be much smaller than others. When the curvatons decay, we assume both of them subdominate the energy density of the universe. We find that, unlike a single curvaton case, here a small or negative, as well as a large $f_{NL}$ can be generated.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, to appear in General Relativity and Gravitatio