Kinematic misalignments in remnants of multiple mergers

Observations indicate that the rotation and minor axes in elliptical galaxies are usually well aligned. However, computer models of dissipationless mergers of pairs of disk galaxies have failed to establish such a correlation, implying that most ellipticals probably did not originate in this manner. Here we consider remnants produced from repeated merging in small groups of a half-dozen or so disk galaxies and find that the internal kinematics of such objects are more representative of actual elliptical galaxies. Although our coverage of parameter space is not complete, the remnants produced in our simulations invariably possess small kinematic misalignments. These results suggest that the majority of elliptical galaxies have had evolutionary histories more complex than those envisaged by simple merger hypotheses.