The MASSIVE Survey VI: The Spatial Distribution and Kinematics of Warm Ionized Gas in the Most Massive Local Early-type Galaxies

Abstract

We present the first systematic investigation of the existence, spatial distribution, and kinematics of warm ionized gas as traced by the [O II] 3727AA emission line in 74 of the most massive galaxies in the local Universe. All of our galaxies have deep integral field spectroscopy from the volume- and magnitude-limited MASSIVE survey of early-type galaxies with stellar mass log(M_*/M_sun) > 11.5 (M_K < -25.3 mag) and distance D < 108 Mpc. Of the 74 galaxies in our sample, we detect warm ionized gas in 28, which yields a global detection fraction of 38\pm6% down to a typical [O II] equivalent width limit of 2AA. MASSIVE fast rotators are more likely to have gas than MASSIVE slow rotators with detection fractions of 80\pm10% and 28\pm6%, respectively. The spatial extents span a wide range of radii (0.6 - 18.2 kpc; 0.1 - 4R_e), and the gas morphologies are diverse, with 17/28 = 61\pm9% being centrally concentrated, 8/28 = 29\pm9% exhibiting clear rotation out to several kpc, and 3/28 = 11\pm6% being extended but patchy. Three out of four fast rotators show kinematic alignment between the stars and gas, whereas the two slow rotators with robust kinematic measurements available exhibit kinematic misalignment. Our inferred warm ionized gas masses are roughly ~10^5M_sun. The emission line ratios and radial equivalent width profiles are generally consistent with excitation of the gas by the old underlying stellar population. We explore different gas origin scenarios for MASSIVE galaxies and find that a variety of physical processes are likely at play, including internal gas recycling, cooling out of the hot gaseous halo, and gas acquired via mergers.

Re-submitted to ApJ after addressing referee report; main body is 14 pages with 6 figures; with appendices, total of 24 pages and 14 figures; comments welcome

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• The MASSIVE Survey - VIII. Stellar Velocity Dispersion Profiles and Environmental Dependence of Early-Type Galaxies
• The MASSIVE survey - XI. What drives the molecular gas properties of early-type galaxies
• Self-consistent predictions for LIER-like emission lines from post-AGB stars
• Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances for MASSIVE and Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies
• The MASSIVE Survey -- XV. A Stellar Dynamical Mass Measurement of the Supermassive Black Hole in Massive Elliptical Galaxy NGC 1453
• WISDOM Project -- VII. Molecular gas measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in NGC 7052
• WISDOM project -- VIII. Multi-scale feedback cycles in the brightest cluster galaxy NGC 0708
• The MASSIVE Survey XIII -- Spatially Resolved Stellar Kinematics in the Central 1 kpc of 20 Massive Elliptical Galaxies with the GMOS-North Integral-Field Spectrograph
• A search for ionised gas outflows in an Halpha imaging atlas of nearby LINERs
• Jet-ISM interaction in NGC 1167 / B2 0258+35, A LINER with an AGN past
• The MASSIVE survey -- XIX. Molecular gas measurements of the supermassive black hole masses in the elliptical galaxies NGC 1684 and NGC 0997
• The DIVING${}^{3D}$ Survey - Deep IFS View of Nuclei of Galaxies - III. Analysis of the nuclear region of the early-type galaxies of the sample