Spin alignments of spiral galaxies within the large-scale structure from SDSS DR7

Abstract

Using a sample of spiral galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7) and Galaxy Zoo 2 (GZ2), we investigate the alignment of spin axes of spiral galaxies with their surrounding large scale structure, which is characterized by the large-scale tidal field reconstructed from the data using galaxy groups above a certain mass threshold. We find that the spin axes of only have weak tendency to be aligned with (or perpendicular to) the intermediate (or minor) axis of the local tidal tensor. The signal is the strongest in a \cluster environment where all the three eigenvalues of the local tidal tensor are positive. Compared to the alignments between halo spins and local tidal field obtained in N-body simulations, the above observational results are in best agreement with those for the spins of inner regions of halos, suggesting that the disk material traces the angular momentum of dark matter halos in the inner regions.

8 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (12)

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• Properties of Dark Matter Haloes in Clusters, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• The Evolution of Dark Matter Halo Properties in Clusters, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• Spin alignment of dark matter haloes in filaments and walls
• The spin and orientation of dark matter halos within cosmic filaments
• The Large-Scale Orientations of Disk Galaxies
• Angular momentum-Large-scale structure alignments in LCDM models and the SDSS
• The Alignments of the Galaxy Spins with the Real-Space Tidal Field Reconstructed from the Two Mass Redshift Survey
• Reconstructing the cosmic density field with the distribution of dark matter halos
• Spin alignment of dark matter haloes in the shells of the largest voids
• Alignment of galaxy spins in the vicinity of voids
• Frequent Spin Reorientation of Galaxies due to Local Interactions

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• The Effect of Filaments and Tendrils on the HI Content of Galaxies
• Possible observational evidence that cosmic filaments spin
• Alignment of galaxies relative to their local environment in SDSS-DR8
• The stability of stellar disks in Milky-Way sized dark matter halos
• Alignment between filaments and galaxy spins from the MaNGA integral-field survey
• Galaxy pairs align with galactic filaments
• A comparison of cosmological filaments catalogues
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: flipping of the spin-filament alignment correlates most strongly with growth of the bulge
• Deviations from tidal torque theory: evolution of the halo spin-filament alignment
• Halo intrinsic alignment: dependence on mass, formation time and environment
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• Hector - a new massively multiplexed IFS instrument for the Anglo-Australian Telescope
• Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Ly$\alpha$ forest tomography
• Measuring alignments between galaxies and the cosmic web at $z\sim 2-3$ using IGM tomography
• Exploring the origin of ultra-diffuse galaxies in clusters from their primordial alignment
• The relationship between gas and galaxies at z<1 using the Q0107 quasar triplet
• Revisiting the alignment of radio galaxies in the ELAIS-N1 field
• A robust determination of halo environment in the cosmic field
• Living with Neighbors. IV. Dissecting the Spin$-$Orbit Alignment of Dark Matter Halos: Interacting Neighbors and the Local Large-scale Structure
• Orientation of the spins of galaxies in the Local volume
• Modelling gas around galaxy pairs and groups using the Q0107 quasar triplet
• Cosmic Web-Halo Connection Between Twin Universes