Unifying the dynamical classification of early-type galaxies: kinematic deficits in IllustrisTNG versus observations
Abstract
We conduct a comparative analysis of galaxy kinematics using IllustrisTNG simulations and integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) observations. We identify 2,342 early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the TNG100 simulation and 236 ETGs from the TNG50 simulation, comparing them with observations from MaNGA and ATLAS. For these systems, we measure key kinematic parameters: the intrinsic spin parameter (measured edge-on), the cylindrical rotational energy fraction , and structural mass ratios including the spheroid mass fraction and stellar halo mass fraction . Our study reveals that standard classifiers--the relation and coefficient (higher-order Fourier term of velocity fields)--fail to align with observed kinematic bimodality. We propose revised thresholds: , , and , which classify galaxies into rotation-dominated (fast rotators) and random motion-dominated (slow rotators). Scaling relations from TNG enable observational estimates of and . The simulations exhibit a bimodality deficit, characterized by a lack of fast rotators and suppressed , attributed to excess galaxies with intermediate rotation and high spheroid/stellar halo mass. We introduce a novel method to estimate from IFS kinematics, though uncertainties remain.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.01098,
title = {Unifying the dynamical classification of early-type galaxies: kinematic deficits in IllustrisTNG versus observations},
author = {Wenyu Zhong and Min Du and Shengdong Lu and Yunpeng Jin and Kai Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.01098},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A