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Register a new userFormation of S0 galaxies through mergers. Morphological properties: tidal relics, lenses, ovals, and other inner components
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M.Carmen Eliche-Moral
Publication date
2018
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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Major mergers are popularly considered too destructive to produce the relaxed regular structures and the morphological inner components (ICs) usually observed in lenticular (S0) galaxies. We aim to test if major mergers can produce remnants with realistic S0 morphologies. We have selected a sample of relaxed discy remnants resulting from the dissipative merger simulations of the GalMer database and derived their properties mimicking the typical conditions of current observational data. We compare their global morphologies, visual components, and merger relics in mock photometric images with their real counterparts. Only $sim$1-2 Gyr after the full merger, we find that: 1) many remnants (67 major and 29 minor events) present relaxed structures and typical S0 or E/S0 morphologies, for a wide variety of orbits and even in gas-poor cases. 2) Contrary to popular expectations, most of them do not exhibit any morphological traces of their past merger origin under typical observing conditions and at distances as nearby as 30 Mpc. 3) The merger relics are more persistent in minor mergers than in major ones for similar relaxing time periods. 4) No major-merger S0-like remnant develops a significant bar. 5) Nearly 58% of the major-merger S0 remnants host visually detectable ICs, such as embedded inner discs, rings, pseudo-rings, inner spirals, nuclear bars, and compact sources, very frequent in real S0s too. 6) All remnants contain a lens or oval, identically ubiquitous in local S0s. 7) These lenses and ovals do not come from bar dilution in major merger cases, but are associated with stellar halos or embedded inner discs instead (thick or thin). We conclude that the relaxed morphologies, lenses, ovals, and other ICs of real S0s do not necessarily come from internal secular evolution, gas infall or environmental mechanisms, as traditionally assumed, but they can result from major mergers as well.
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(Abridged version) We explore whether a scenario that combines an origin by mergers at $zsim$1.8-1.5 with a subsequent passive evolution of the resulting S0 remnants since $z sim$0.8-1 is compatible with observational data of S0s in the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR). We studied a set of major and minor merger experiments from the GalMer database that generate massive S0 remnants. We analysed the location of these remnants in the photometric and stellar TFRs assuming that they correspond to $zsim0.8$ galaxies. We then estimated their evolution in these planes over the last 7 Gyr. The results were compared with data of real S0s and spirals at different redshifts. We also tested how the use of Vcirc or Vrot,max affects the results. We found that just after $sim$1-2 Gyr of coalescence, major mergers generate S0 remnants that are outliers of the local photometric and stellar TFRs at $zsim0.8$. After $sim$4-7 Gyr of passive evolution in isolation, the S0 remnants move towards the local TFR, although the initial scatter among them persists. This scatter is sensitive to the indicator used for the rotation velocity: Vcirc values yield a lower scatter than when Vrot,max values are considered instead. In the planes involving Vrot,max, a clear segregation of the S0 remnants in terms of the spin-orbit coupling of the model is observed, in which the remnants of retrograde encounters overlap with local S0s hosting counter-rotating discs. The location of the S0 remnants at $zsim 0$ agrees well with the observed distribution of local S0 galaxies in the $sigma_0$-$M_K$, Vcirc-$sigma_0$ and Vrot,max-$sigma_0$ planes. Thus, massive S0 galaxies may have been formed through major mergers that occurred at high redshift and have later evolved towards the local TFR through passive evolution in relative isolation, a mechanism that would also contribute to the scatter observed in this relation.
The origin of S0 galaxies is discussed in the framework of early mergers in a Cold Dark Matter cosmology, and in a scenario where S0s are assumed to be former spirals stripped of gas. From an analysis of 127 early-type disk galaxies (S0-Sa), we find a clear correlation between the scale parameters of the bulge (r_eff) and the disk (h_R), a correlation which is difficult to explain if these galaxies were formed in mergers of disk galaxies. However, the stripping hypothesis, including quiescent star formation, is not sufficient to explain the origin of S0s either, because it is not compatible with our finding that S0s have a significantly smaller fraction of bars (46$pm$6 %) than their assumed progenitors, S0/a galaxies (93$pm$5 %) or spirals (64-69 %). Our conclusion is that even if a large majority of S0s were descendants of spiral galaxies, bars and ovals must play an important role in their evolution. The smaller fraction particularly of strong bars in S0 galaxies is compensated by a larger fraction of ovals/lenses (97$pm$2 % compared to 82-83 % in spirals), many of which might be weakened bars. We also found massive disk-like bulges in nine of the S0 galaxies, bulges which might have formed at an early gas-rich stage of galaxy evolution.
Gas stripping of spiral galaxies or mergers are thought to be the formation mechanisms of lenticular galaxies. In order to determine the conditions in which each scenario dominates, we derive stellar populations of both the bulge and disk regions of 279 lenticular galaxies in the MaNGA survey. We find a clear bimodality in stellar age and metallicity within the population of S0s and this is strongly correlated with stellar mass. Old and metal-rich bulges and disks belong to massive galaxies, and young and metal-poor bulges and disks are hosted by low-mass galaxies. From this we conclude that the bulges and disks are co-evolving. When the bulge and disk stellar ages are compared, we find that the bulge is almost always older than the disk for massive galaxies ($textrm{M}_{star} > 10^{10}~textrm{M}_{odot}$). The opposite is true for lower mass galaxies. We conclude that we see two separate populations of lenticular galaxies. The old, massive, and metal-rich population possess bulges that are predominantly older than their disks, which we speculate may have been caused by morphological or inside-out quenching. In contrast, the less massive and more metal-poor population have bulges with more recent star formation than their disks. We postulate they may be undergoing bulge rejuvenation (or disk fading), or compaction. Environment doesnt play a distinct role in the properties of either population. Our findings give weight to the notion that while the faded spiral scenario likely formed low-mass S0s, other processes, such as mergers, may be responsible for high-mass S0s.
Very little work has been done on star formation in dwarf lenticular galaxies (S0s). We present 2D-spectroscopic and millimetre observations made by Centro Astronomico Hispano Aleman (CAHA) 3.5 m optical and the IRAM-30 m millimetre telescopes, respectively, for a sample of four dwarf S0 galaxies with multiple star formation regions in the field environment. We find that although most of the sources deviate from the star forming main sequence relation, they all follow the Kennicutt-Schmidt law. After comparing the stellar and Halpha kinematics, we find that the velocity fields of both stars and ionized gas do not show regular motion and the velocity dispersions of stars and ionized gas are low in the regions with high star formation, suggesting these star-forming S0 galaxies still have significant rotation. This view can be supported by the result that most of these dwarf S0 galaxies are classified as fast rotators. The ratio of average atomic gas mass to stellar mass (~ 47%) is much greater than that of molecular gas mass to stellar mass (~ 1%). In addition, the gas-phase metallicities in the star-forming regions are lower than that of the non-star-forming regions. These results indicate that the extended star formation may originate from the combination of abundant atomic hydrogen, long dynamic time scale and low-density environment.
We study the present-day connection between galaxy morphology and angular momentum using the {sc Dark Sage} semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. For galaxies between $ 10^{11}-10^{12} mathrm{M}_{odot}$ in stellar mass, the model successfully predicts the observed trend whereby galaxies with more prominent disks exhibit higher {em stellar} disk specific angular momentum ($j_{rm stellar, disk}$) at fixed stellar mass. However, when we include the gas in the disk, bulge-dominated galaxies have the highest {em total} disk specific angular momentum ($j_{rm total, disk}$). We attribute this to a large contribution from an extended disk of cold gas in typical bulge-dominated galaxies. We find the relationship between $j_{rm dark matter}$ and morphology to be quite complex. Surprisingly, in this stellar mass range, not only do bulge-dominated galaxies tend to live in halos with higher $j_{rm dark matter}$ than disk-dominated galaxies, but intermediate galaxies (those with roughly equal fractions of bulge and disk mass) have the lowest $j_{rm dark matter}$ of all. Yet, when controlling for halo mass, rather than stellar mass, the relationship between $j_{rm dark matter}$ and morphology vanishes. Based on these results, halo mass rather than angular momentum is the main driver of the predicted morphology sequence at high masses. In fact, in our stellar mass range, disk-dominated galaxies live in dark matter halos that are roughly 1/10th the mass of their bulge-dominated counterparts.
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