Hydrodynamical Simulations of the Triggering of Nuclear Activities by
  Minor Mergers of Galaxies
  Major mergers of galaxies are considered to be an efficient way to trigger
Active Galactic Nuclei and are thought to be responsible for the phenomenon of
quasars. This has however recently been challenged by observations of a large
number of low luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei at low redshift ($z\lesssim1$)
without obvious major merger signatures. Minor mergers are frequently proposed
to explain the existence of these Active Galactic Nuclei. In this paper, we
perform nine high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of minor galaxy mergers
and investigate whether nuclear activities can be efficiently triggered by
minor mergers, by setting various properties for the progenitor galaxies of
those mergers. We find that minor galaxy merger scan activate the massive black
hole in the primary galaxy with an Eddington ratio of $f_{\rm Edd}>0.01$ and
$>0.05$ (or a bolometric luminosity $>10^{43}$ and $>10^{44}\mathrm{erg\,
s^{-1}}$) with a duration of $2.71$ and $0.49$ Gyr (or $2.69$ and $0.19$ Gyr),
respectively. The nuclear activity of primary galaxy strongly depends on the
nucleus separation, the nucleus is more active as the two nuclei approach to
each other. Dual Active Galactic Nuclei systems can still possibly form by
minor mergers of galaxies, the time period for dual Active Galactic Nuclei is
only $\sim 0.011$ Gyr and $\sim 0.017$ Gyr with Eddington ratio of $f_{\rm
Edd}>0.05$ and bolometric luminosity $>10^{44}\mathrm{erg\, s^{-1}}$. This time
period is typically shorter than that of dual Active Galactic Nuclei induced by
galaxy major mergers.
