Kinematical Fluctuations Vary with Galaxy Surface Mass Density

Abstract

The Galaxy inner parts are generally considered to be optically symmetric, as well as kinematically symmetric for most massive early-type galaxies. At the lower-mass end, many galaxies contain lots of small patches in their velocity maps, causing their kinematics to be nonsmooth in small scales and far from symmetry. These small patches can easily be mistaken for measurement uncertainties and have not been well discussed. We used the comparison of observations and numerical simulations to demonstrate the small patches existence beyond uncertainties. For the first time we have found that the fluctuation degrees have an approximate inverse loglinear relation with the galaxy stellar surface mass densities. This tight relation among galaxies that do not show obvious optical asymmetry that traces environmental perturbations indicates that stellar motion in galaxies has inherent asymmetry besides external environment influences. The degree of the kinetic asymmetry is closely related to and constrained by the intrinsic properties of the host galaxy.

13 pages,10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL

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Cited by in corpus (1)

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