Dynamic S0 Galaxies II: the Role of Diffuse Hot Gas

TL;DR

This study investigates the hot gas content in isolated S0 galaxies using Chandra X-ray data, revealing low hot gas luminosity and correlations with cold gas, which inform galaxy evolution and gas removal processes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of hot gas in isolated S0 galaxies and explores the relationship between hot and cold gas, highlighting differences from elliptical galaxies.

Findings

All studied galaxies are X-ray faint with LX<5% of expected SN energy.

At high stellar mass, S0 galaxies have lower LX than ellipticals.

LX/LK^2 correlates with cold gas mass in gas-poor galaxies and anti-correlates in gas-rich ones.

Abstract

Gas loss is thought to be important in SF quenching and morphological transition during the evolution of S0 galaxies. In high density environments, gas loss can be achieved via many external mechanisms. However, in relatively isolated environments, where these external mechanisms cannot be efficient, gas loss must be dominated by some internal processes. We perform Chandra analysis of hot gas in five nearby isolated S0 galaxies, based on quantitative subtraction of various stellar contributions. We find that all the galaxies studied in the present work are X-ray faint, with the hot gas luminosity LX<5% of the expected Ia SN energy injection rate. We further compare our results with those from relevant recent papers, in order to investigate the energy budget, cold-hot gas relation, and gas removal from S0 galaxies in isolated environments. We find that elliptical and S0 galaxies are not significantly different in LX at the low mass end (typically with LK<1e11Lsun). However, at the high mass end, S0 galaxies tend to have significantly lower LX than elliptical galaxies of the same stellar masses. We further discuss the potential relation of the diffuse X-ray emission with the cold gas content in S0 and elliptical galaxies. We find that LX/LK^2 tends to correlate positively with the total cold gas mass M(H2+HI) for gas-poor galaxies with M(H2+HI)<1e8Msun, while they anti-correlate with each other for gas-rich ones. This cold-hot gas relation can be explained in a scenario of galaxy evolution, with the leftover cold gas from the precursor star forming galaxy mainly removed by the long-lasting Ia SN feedback. The two different trends for gas-rich and -poor galaxies may be the results of the initial fast decreasing SN rate and the later fast decreasing mass-loading to hot gas, respectively.