The specific angular momentum of disc galaxies and its connection with galaxy morphology, bar structure, and disc gravitational instability
Journal article, 2023

The specific angular momenta (j equivalent to J/M) of stars (j(star)), gas (j(gas)), baryons as a whole (j(b)) and dark matter haloes (j(h)) contain clues of vital importance about how galaxies form and evolve. Using one of the largest samples of disc galaxies (S0-BCD) with high-quality rotation curves and near-infrared surface photometry, we perform a detailed comparative analysis of j that stretches across a variety of galaxy properties. Our analysis imposes tight constraints on the 'retained' fractions of specific angular momentum (j(star)/j(h), j(Hi)/j(h), and j(b)/j(h)), as well as on their systematic trends with mass fraction and galaxy morphology, thus on how well specific angular momentum is conserved in the process of disc galaxy formation and evolution. In particular, one of the most innovative results of our analysis is the finding that galaxies with larger baryon fractions have also retained larger fractions of their specific angular momentum. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates how challenging it is to characterize barred galaxies from a gravitational instability point of view. This is true not only for the popular Efstathiou, Lake & Negroponte bar instability criterion, which fails to separate barred from non-barred galaxies in about 55 percent of the cases, but also for the mass-weighted Toomre parameter of atomic gas, < Q(HI)>, which succeeds in separating barred from non-barred galaxies, but only in a statistical sense.

galaxies: haloes

galaxies: ISM

instabilities

galaxies: kinematics and dynamics

galaxies: fundamental parameters

galaxies: stellar content

Author

Alessandro Romeo

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics

Oscar Agertz

Lund University

Florent Renaud

Lund University

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

0035-8711 (ISSN) 1365-2966 (eISSN)

Vol. 518 1 1002-1021

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stac3074

More information

Latest update

2/8/2023 4