Spin Flips - II. Evolution of dark matter halo spin orientation, and its correlation with major mergers

Abstract

We expand our previous study on the relationship between changes in the orientation of the angular momentum vector of dark matter haloes ("spin flips") and changes in their mass (Bett & Frenk 2012), to cover the full range of halo masses in a simulation cube of length 100 $h^{-1}$ Mpc. Since strong disturbances to a halo (such as might be indicated by a large change in the spin direction) are likely also to disturb the galaxy evolving within, spin flips could be a mechanism for galaxy morphological transformation without involving major mergers. We find that 35% of haloes have, at some point in their lifetimes, had a spin flip of at least $45°$ that does not coincide with a major merger. Over 75% of large spin flips coincide with non-major mergers; only a quarter coincide with major mergers. We find a similar picture for changes to the inner-halo spin orientation, although here there is an increased likelihood of a flip occurring. Changes in halo angular momentum orientation, and other such measures of halo perturbation, are therefore very important quantities to consider, in addition to halo mergers, when modelling the formation and evolution of galaxies and confronting such models with observations.

19 pages, 26 figures. Updated to match version accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (19)

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• The Cosmic Ballet II: Spin alignment of galaxies and haloes with large-scale filaments in the EAGLE simulation
• A mass threshold for galactic gas discs by spin flips
• Mapping stellar content to dark matter halos - III.Environmental dependence and conformity of galaxy colours
• Observational detection of correlation between galaxy spins and initial conditions
• Deviations from tidal torque theory: evolution of the halo spin-filament alignment
• The twisted dark matter halo of the Milky Way
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• Spin Alignment of Dark Matter Halos: Mad Halos