The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Physical drivers of stellar-gas kinematic misalignments in the nearby Universe

Abstract

Misalignments between the rotation axis of stars and gas are an indication of external processes shaping galaxies throughout their evolution. Using observations of 3068 galaxies from the SAMI Galaxy Survey, we compute global kinematic position angles for 1445 objects with reliable kinematics and identify 169 (12%) galaxies which show stellar-gas misalignments. Kinematically decoupled features are more prevalent in early-type/passive galaxies compared to late-type/star-forming systems. Star formation is the main source of gas ionisation in only 22% of misaligned galaxies; 17% are Seyfert objects, while 61% show Low-Ionisation Nuclear Emission-line Region features. We identify the most probable physical cause of the kinematic decoupling and find that, while accretion-driven cases are dominant, for up to 8% of our sample, the misalignment may be tracing outflowing gas. When considering only misalignments driven by accretion, the acquired gas is feeding active star formation in only $\sim$1/4 of cases. As a population, misaligned galaxies have higher Sérsic indices and lower stellar spin & specific star formation rates than appropriately matched samples of aligned systems. These results suggest that both morphology and star formation/gas content are significantly correlated with the prevalence and timescales of misalignments. Specifically, torques on misaligned gas discs are smaller for more centrally concentrated galaxies, while the newly accreted gas feels lower viscous drag forces in more gas-poor objects. Marginal evidence of star formation not being correlated with misalignment likelihood for late-type galaxies suggests that such morphologies in the nearby Universe might be the result of preferentially aligned accretion at higher redshifts.

arXiv comment25 pages (5 in appendices); 11 figures (2 in appendices); accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (85)

• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• The Host Galaxies of AGN
• Theoretical Modeling of Starburst Galaxies
• How Do Galaxies Get Their Gas?
• The Host Galaxies and Classification of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Formation of Galactic Disks
• A Unified, Merger-Driven Model for the Origin of Starbursts, Quasars, the Cosmic X-Ray Background, Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Spheroids
• Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• CIGALE: a python Code Investigating GALaxy Emission
• Using Strong Lines to Estimate Abundances in Extragalactic HII Regions and Starburst Galaxies
• The Atlas3D project -- I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria
• Analysis of galaxy SEDs from far-UV to far-IR with CIGALE: Studying a SINGS test sample
• The SAURON project -- IX. A kinematic classification for early-type galaxies
• The ATLAS3D project - III. A census of the stellar angular momentum within the effective radius of early-type galaxies: unveiling the distribution of Fast and Slow Rotators
• The SAURON project -- X. The orbital anisotropy of elliptical and lenticular galaxies: revisiting the (V/sigma,epsilon) diagram with integral-field stellar kinematics
• Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs
• Kinemetry: a generalisation of photometry to the higher moments of the line-of-sight velocity distribution
• Star Formation and Dust Attenuation Properties in Galaxies from a Statistical UV-to-FIR Analysis
• Alternative diagnostic diagrams and the "forgotten" population of weak line galaxies in the SDSS
• Efficient Multi-Gaussian Expansion of galaxies
• Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral-Field Spectroscopy
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: instrument specification and target selection
• Gaseous Galaxy Halos
• The ATLAS3D project - II. Morphologies, kinemetric features and alignment between photometric and kinematic axes of early-type galaxies
• New light on the search for low metallicity galaxies I. The N2 method
• GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog (GSWLC): Star Formation Rates, Stellar Masses and Dust Attenuations of 700,000 Low-redshift Galaxies
• A Constant Molecular Gas Depletion Time in Nearby Disk Galaxies
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): The GAMA Galaxy Group Catalogue (G3Cv1)
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Structural Investigation of Galaxies via Model Analysis (SIGMA)
• The Atlas3D project - X. On the origin of the molecular and ionised gas in early-type galaxies
• The Origin of Disks and Spheroids in Simulated Galaxies
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Data Release 4 and the z < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions
• The Dawes Review 9: The role of cold gas stripping on the star formation quenching of satellite galaxies
• Star formation sustained by gas accretion
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the link between angular momentum and optical morphology
• Illuminating Low-Surface-Brightness Galaxies with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey
• ProSpect: Generating Spectral Energy Distributions with Complex Star Formation and Metallicity Histories
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Revisiting Galaxy Classification Through High-Order Stellar Kinematics
• The impact of feedback on cosmological gas accretion
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Stellar angular momentum of about 2300 galaxies: unveiling the bimodality of massive galaxy properties
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Early Data Release
• Tracing kinematic (mis)alignments in CALIFA merging galaxies: Stellar and ionized gas kinematic orientations at every merger stage
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the third and final data release
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Spatially Resolving the Main Sequence of Star Formation
• The drop in the cosmic star formation rate below redshift 2 is caused by a change in the mode of gas accretion and by AGN feedback
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Cubism and covariance, putting round pegs into square holes
• The Central Kiloparsec of Seyfert and Inactive Host Galaxies: a Comparison of Two-Dimensional Stellar and Gaseous Kinematics
• LZIFU: an emission-line fitting toolkit for integral field spectroscopy data
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): A forensic SED reconstruction of the cosmic star formation history and metallicity evolution by galaxy type
• Building disc structure and galaxy properties through angular momentum: The DARK SAGE semi-analytic model
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Properties of galaxies with kinematically decoupled stellar and gaseous components
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: extraplanar gas, galactic winds, and their association with star formation history
• A Broad Search for Counterrotating Gas and Stars: Evidence for Mergers and Accretion
• On the lifetime of merger features of equal-mass disk mergers
• xGASS: Gas-rich central galaxies in small groups and their connections to cosmic web gas feeding
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Quenching of star formation in clusters I. Transition galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Data Release One with Emission-line Physics Value-Added Products
• The origin of the atomic and molecular gas contents of early-type galaxies. II. Misaligned gas accretion
• The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS). A massive multi-phase outflow impacting the edge-on galaxy HE1353-1917
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Stellar and gas misalignments and the origin of gas in nearby galaxies
• Kinematic alignment of non-interacting CALIFA galaxies: Quantifying the impact of bars on stellar and ionised gas velocity field orientations
• Optimal Extraction of Fibre Optic Spectroscopy
• On the depletion and accretion timescales of cold gas in local early-type galaxies
• Gas accretion from minor mergers in local spiral galaxies
• The growth of the central region by acquisition of counter-rotating gas in star-forming galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: The internal orbital structure and mass distribution of passive galaxies from triaxial orbit-superposition Schwarzschild models
• The SAMI Pilot Survey: Stellar Kinematics of Galaxies in Abell 85, 168 and 2399
• The rise and fall of stellar discs across the peak of cosmic star formation history: mergers versus smooth accretion
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: stellar population and structural trends across the Fundamental Plane
• Recovering ${\lambda }_R$ and $V/\sigma$ from seeing-dominated IFS data
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: a statistical approach to an optimal classification of stellar kinematics in galaxy surveys
• Simulations of AGN Driven Galactic Outflow Morphology and Content
• The Formation of S0 Galaxies with Counter-Rotating Neutral and Molecular Hydrogen
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Mass and Environment as Independent Drivers of Galaxy Dynamics
• A SAMI and MaNGA view on the stellar kinematics of galaxies on the star-forming main sequence
• Decoupling the rotation of stars and gas -- II: the link between black hole activity and MaNGA kinematics in TNG
• SDSS IV MaNGA: Characterizing Non-Axisymmetric Motions in Galaxy Velocity Fields Using the Radon Transform
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Global Properties of Kinematically Misaligned Galaxies
• SDSS-IV MaNGA : spatial resolved properties of kinematically misaligned galaxies
• Active Galactic Nuclei outflows in galaxy discs
• The Hi Environment of Counter-rotating Gas Hosts: Gas Accretion from Cold Gas Blobs
• Star-gas misalignment in galaxies: I. The properties of galaxies from the Horizon-AGN simulation and comparisons to SAMI
• Star-Gas Misalignment in Galaxies: II. Origins Found from the Horizon-AGN Simulation
• Larger ${\lambda }_R$ in the disc of isolated active spiral galaxies than in their non-active twins
• Unraveling the complex structure of AGN-driven outflows: IV. Comparing AGNs with and without strong outflows

Cited by in corpus (11)

• WALLABY Pilot Survey: the Potential Polar Ring Galaxies NGC~4632 and NGC~6156
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Using Tidal Streams and Shells to Trace the Dynamical Evolution of Massive Galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: galaxy spin is more strongly correlated with stellar population age than mass or environment
• The formation pathways of compact elliptical galaxies
• The Tully-Fisher relation from SDSS-MaNGA: Physical causes of scatter and variation at different radii
• MaNGA AGN dwarf galaxies (MAD) -- II. AGN outflows in dwarf galaxies
• Witnessing a Transformation to Blue-cored Dwarf Early-type Galaxies in Filaments and the Cluster Outskirts: Gas-phase Abundances and Internal Kinematics Perspectives
• The circular velocity and halo mass functions of galaxies in the nearby Universe
• Stellar-gas kinematic misalignments in EAGLE: lifetimes and longevity of misaligned galaxies
• The SAMI Survey: Evidence for dynamical coupling of ionised gas and young stellar populations
• Kinematic misalignment as a driver of black hole activity in galaxies with external interactions