English

Dynamical evidence for a morphology-dependent relation between the stellar and halo masses of galaxies

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-05-26 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We derive the stellar-to-halo mass relation (SHMR), namely fM/Mhf_\star\propto M_\star/M_{\rm h} versus MM_\star and MhM_{\rm h}, for early-type galaxies from their near-IR luminosities (for MM_\star) and the position-velocity distributions of their globular cluster systems (for MhM_{\rm h}). Our individual estimates of MhM_{\rm h} are based on fitting a dynamical model with a distribution function expressed in terms of action-angle variables and imposing a prior on MhM_{\rm h} from the concentration-mass relation in the standard Λ\LambdaCDM cosmology. We find that the SHMR for early-type galaxies declines with mass beyond a peak at M5×1010MM_\star\sim 5\times 10^{10}M_\odot and Mh1012MM_{\rm h}\sim 10^{12}M_\odot (near the mass of the Milky Way). This result is consistent with the standard SHMR derived by abundance matching for the general population of galaxies, and with previous, less robust derivations of the SHMR for early types. However, it contrasts sharply with the monotonically rising SHMR for late types derived from extended HI rotation curves and the same Λ\LambdaCDM prior on MhM_{\rm h} as we adopt for early types. The SHMR for massive galaxies varies more or less continuously, from rising to falling, with decreasing disc fraction and decreasing Hubble type. We also show that the different SHMRs for late and early types are consistent with the similar scaling relations between their stellar velocities and masses (Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson relations). Differences in the relations between the stellar and halo virial velocities account for the similarity of the scaling relations. We argue that all these empirical findings are natural consequences of a picture in which galactic discs are built mainly by smooth and gradual inflow, regulated by feedback from young stars, while galactic spheroids are built by a cooperation between merging, black-hole fuelling, and feedback from AGNs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.11282,
  title  = {Dynamical evidence for a morphology-dependent relation between the stellar and halo masses of galaxies},
  author = {Lorenzo Posti and S. Michael Fall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.11282},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in A&A. Figure 3 shows the main result of the paper