English

Unifying the dynamical classification of early-type galaxies: kinematic deficits in IllustrisTNG versus observations

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-02-04 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

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 ATLAS3D^{3D}. For these systems, we measure key kinematic parameters: the intrinsic spin parameter λR,intr\lambda_{R,\mathrm{intr}} (measured edge-on), the cylindrical rotational energy fraction κrot\kappa_{\mathrm{rot}}, and structural mass ratios including the spheroid mass fraction fspheroidf_{\mathrm{spheroid}} and stellar halo mass fraction fhalof_{\mathrm{halo}}. Our study reveals that standard classifiers--the λR(Re)=0.31ε\lambda_{R}(R_e)=0.31\sqrt{\varepsilon} relation and k5\overline{k_5} coefficient (higher-order Fourier term of velocity fields)--fail to align with observed kinematic bimodality. We propose revised thresholds: λR,intr0.4\lambda_{R,\mathrm{intr}} \sim 0.4, κrot0.5\kappa_{\mathrm{rot}} \sim 0.5, and fspheroid0.6f_{\mathrm{spheroid}} \sim 0.6, which classify galaxies into rotation-dominated (fast rotators) and random motion-dominated (slow rotators). Scaling relations from TNG enable observational estimates of κrot\kappa_{\mathrm{rot}} and fspheroidf_{\mathrm{spheroid}}. The simulations exhibit a bimodality deficit, characterized by a lack of fast rotators and suppressed λR,intr\lambda_{R,\mathrm{intr}}, attributed to excess galaxies with intermediate rotation and high spheroid/stellar halo mass. We introduce a novel method to estimate fhalof_{\mathrm{halo}} 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