  In a series of recent papers, a new formalism has been developed that
explains the inner structure of dark matter halos as collisionless,
dissipationless systems assembled through mergers and accretion at the typical
cosmological rate. Nearby ellipticals are also collisionless, dissipationless
systems assembling their mass through mergers, but contrarily to the former
structures they do not continuously accrete external matter because they are
shielded by their host halos. Here we explore the idea that the infall of their
own matter ejected within the halo on the occasion of a violent merger can play
a role similar to external accretion in halos. The predicted stellar mass
density profile fits the observed one, and the empirical total mass density
profile is also recovered.
