Disk flaring with TNG50: diversity across Milky Way and M31 analogs

Abstract

We use the sample of 198 Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) analogs from TNG50 to quantify the level of disk flaring predicted by a modern, high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. Disk flaring refers to the increase of vertical stellar disk height with galactocentric distance. The TNG50 galaxies are selected to have stellar disky morphology, a stellar mass in the range of $M_{\ast }=10^{10.5-11.2}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$, and a MW-like Mpc-scale environment at $z=0$. The stellar disks of such TNG50 MW/M31 analogs exhibit a wide diversity of structural properties, including a number of galaxies with disk scalelength and thin and thick disk scaleheights that are comparable to those measured or inferred for the Galaxy and Andromeda. With one set of physical ingredients, TNG50 returns a large variety of flaring flavours and amounts, also for mono-age stellar populations. With this paper, we hence propose a non-parametric characterization of flaring. The typical MW/M31 analogs exhibit disk scaleheights that are $1.5-2$ times larger in the outer than in the inner regions of the disk for both old and young stellar populations, but with a large galaxy-to-galaxy variation. Which stellar population flares more, and by how much, also varies from galaxy to galaxy. TNG50 de facto brackets existing observational constraints for the Galaxy and all previous numerical findings. A link between the amount of flaring and the $z=0$ global galaxy structural properties or merger history is complex. However, a connection between the scaleheights and the local stellar vertical kinematics and gravitational potential is clearly in place.

Submitted to MNRAS. Main figures: 5, 13. See presentation and data release of TNG50 MW/M31 analogs by Pillepich et al. and see also Ramesh et al. on astro-ph today

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