Fully Compressive Tides in Galaxy Mergers
The disruptive effect of galactic tides is a textbook example of gravitational dynamics. However, depending on the shape of the potential, tides can also become fully compressive. When that is the case, they might trigger or strengthen the formation of galactic substructures (star clusters and tidal dwarf galaxies), instead of destroying them. We perform N-body simulations of interacting galaxies