Self-consistent dynamical models for early-type galaxies in the CALIFA Survey

We present the first application of self-consistent, continuous models with distribution functions (DFs) depending on the action integrals, to a sample of nearby early-type galaxies in the CALIFA Survey. Each model is axisymmetric, flattened, anisotropic and rotating and the total gravitational potential is self-consistently generated by the density distribution. The spatially-resolved kinematics of the CALIFA Survey gives solid constraints to the models' parameters: we fit the galaxies' surface brightness and the galaxies' spatially resolved kinematics and we estimate dynamical masses in agreement with other dynamical modelling approaches. For each galaxy, the best model provides an analytic DF which fully characterizes the velocity distribution of the stars. The fact that the DF depends on the action integrals makes it easy to extend the present models to have multiple components, such as bulge, stellar disc and dark and stellar halo, in equilibrium with their self-consistent gravitational potential.