English

HI angular momentum mass relation

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-08-11 v1

Abstract

We study the relationship between the H{\sc i} specific angular momentum (jg_{\rm g}) and the H{\sc i} mass (Mg_{\rm g}) for a sample of galaxies with well measured H{\sc i} rotation curves. We find that the relation is well described by an unbroken power law \jg \propto \mgα^{\alpha} over the entire mass range (107^{7}-1010.5^{10.5} M_{\odot}), with α=0.89±0.05\alpha = 0.89 \pm 0.05 (scatter 0.18 dex). This is in reasonable agreement with models which assume that evolutionary processes maintain H{\sc i} disks in a marginally stable state. The slope we observe is also significantly different from both the jM2/3j \propto M^{2/3} relation expected for dark matter haloes from tidal torquing models and the observed slope of the specific angular momentum-mass relation for the stellar component of disk galaxies. Our sample includes two H{\sc i}-bearing ultra diffuse galaxies, and we find that their angular momentum follows the same relation as other galaxies. The only discrepant galaxies in our sample are early-type galaxies with large rotating H{\sc i} disks which are found to have significantly higher angular momentum than expected from the power law relation. The H{\sc i} disks of all these early-type galaxies are misaligned or counter-rotating with respect to the stellar disks, consistent with the gas being recently accreted. We speculate that late stage wet mergers, as well as cold flows play a dominant role in determining the kinematics of the baryonic component of galaxies as suggested by recent numerical simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.13630,
  title  = {HI angular momentum mass relation},
  author = {Sushma Kurapati and Jayaram N. Chengalur and Marc A. W. Verheijen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.13630},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS.15 pages, 22 figures, 6 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:37:00.584Z