The MASSIVE Survey – VII. The relationship of angular momentum, stellar mass and environment of early-type galaxies

Abstract

We analyse the environmental properties of 370 local early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the MASSIVE and ATLAS 3D surveys, two complementary volume-limited integralfield spectroscopic (IFS) galaxy surveys spanning absolute K-band magnitude −21.5 > ∼ M K > ∼ − 26.6, or stellar mass 8 × 10 9 < ∼ M * < ∼ 2 × 10 12 M . We find these galaxies to reside in a diverse range of environments measured by four methods: group membership (whether a galaxy is a brightest group/cluster galaxy, satellite, or isolated), halo mass, large-scale mass density (measured over a few Mpc), and local mass density (measured within the Nth neighbour). The spatially resolved IFS stellar kinematics provide robust measurements of the spin parameter λ e and enable us to examine the relationship among λ e , M * , and galaxy environment. We find a strong correlation between λ e and M * , where the average λ e decreases from ∼ 0.4 to below 0.1 with increasing mass, and the fraction of slow rotators f slow increases from ∼ 10% to 90%. We show for the first time that at fixed M * , there are almost no trends between galaxy spin and environment; the apparent kinematic morphology-density relation for ETGs is therefore primarily driven by M * and is accounted for by the joint correlations between M * and spin, and between M * and environment. A possible exception is that the increased f slow at high local density is slightly more than expected based only on these joint correlations. Our results suggest that the physical processes responsible for building up the present-day stellar masses of massive galaxies are also very efficient at reducing their spin, in any environment.

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Probing the Kinematic Morphology–Density Relation of Early-type Galaxies with MaNGA

“…The majority of these galaxies are central galaxies living in a wide range of halo masses. Veale et al (2017a) do not find a compelling environmental dependence of R l at fixed M * . Brough et al (2017) examine eight clusters observed by SAMI (Croom et al 2012).…”

“…Two larger IFS surveys have recently published relevant studies. Veale et al (2017a) examined a mass-selected sample of galaxies from MASSIVE (Ma et al 2014). The majority of these galaxies are central galaxies living in a wide range of halo masses.…”

Specific Frequencies and Luminosity Profiles of Cluster Galaxies and Intracluster Light in Abell 1689

“…In this classification scheme, only ∼ 30% of morphologically identified early-type galaxies are slow rotators, once considered a common characteristic of spheroidal systems ). However, the fraction of slow rotators increases with mass, reaching 80% for stellar masses M ⋆ > 5 × 10 11 M ⊙ (Veale et al 2017a). The kinematical classification is based on the projected stellar angular momentum λ R (measured within R e ) and projected ellipticity ǫ.…”

“…These authors suggested that the dynamical processes operating in highdensity environments makes them more efficient in producing slow rotators. More recently, Veale et al (2017a) explored a wider range of environments and concluded that the apparent trend was actually driven by the underlying correlation of slow rotator fraction with stellar mass, coupled with the tendency for more massive galaxies to occur in higher density regions. Motivated by these considerations, D 'Eugenio et al (2013) determined the fraction of slow rotators in the core of A1689, a much denser environment than the Virgo cluster or any other nearby region.…”

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Uncovering the Angular Momentum Content of Central and Satellite Early-type Galaxies

“…We have long understood that rotational support s V (with V the maximum radial velocity and σ the stellar velocity dispersion) is a function of internal galaxy properties, with lower-mass ellipticals and S0s (earlytype galaxies) having more rotation than the most massive elliptical galaxies (e.g., Binney 1978;Davies et al 1983;Bender et al 1989;Franx & Illingworth 1990;Kormendy & Bender 1996). IFS studies have definitively shown that *L early-type galaxies typically have some net rotation , while the most massive elliptical galaxies tend to have little to no net rotation (e.g., Emsellem et al 2011;Houghton et al 2013;Raskutti et al 2014;Scott et al 2014;Brough et al 2017;Oliva-Altamirano et al 2017;Veale et al 2017aVeale et al , 2017b.…”