The Formation of Compact Elliptical Galaxies in the Vicinity of a Massive Galaxy: The Role of Ram-pressure Confinement

Compact ellipticals (cEs) are outliers from the scaling relations of early-type galaxies, particularly the mass–metallicity relation, which is an important outcome of feedback. The formation of such low-mass, but metal-rich and compact, objects is a long-standing puzzle. Using a pair of high-resolution N-body+gas simulations, we investigate the evolution of a gas-rich low-mass galaxy on a highly radial orbit around a massive host galaxy. As the …