Flow Patterns around Dark Matter Halos: the Link between Halo Dynamical Properties and Large Scale Tidal Field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the dynamical properties of dark matter halos are influenced by their formation history and the large-scale tidal field, revealing environment-dependent accretion patterns and alignments that affect galaxy spins and structures.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the link between halo dynamical properties, their formation processes, and the large-scale tidal environment using cosmological simulations.

Findings

Tangential infall velocity increases with tidal field strength

Infall halo alignments depend on local tidal field axes

Weak tidal fields favor radial accretion patterns

Abstract

We study how halo intrinsic dynamical properties are linked to their formation processes for halos in two mass ranges, $10^{12}-10^{12.5}h^{-1}{\rm M_\odot}$ and $\ge 10^{13}h^{-1}{\rm M_\odot}$, and how both are correlated with the large scale tidal field within which the halos reside at present. Halo merger trees obtained from cosmological $N$-body simulations are used to identify infall halos that are about to merge with their hosts. We find that the tangential component of the infall velocity increases significantly with the strength of the local tidal field, but no strong correlation is found for the radial component. These results can be used to explain how the internal velocity anisotropy and spin of halos depend on environment. The position vectors and velocities of infall halos are aligned with the principal axes of the local tidal field, and the alignment depends on the strength of the tidal field. Opposite accretion patterns are found in weak and strong tidal fields, in the sense that in a weak field the accretion flow is dominated by radial motion within the local structure, while a large tangential component is present in a strong field. These findings can be used to understand the strong alignments we find between the principal axes of the internal velocity ellipsoids of halos and the local tidal field, and their dependence on the strength of tidal field. They also explain why halo spin increases with the strength of local tidal field, but only in weak tidal fields does the spin-tidal field alignment follow the prediction of the tidal torque theory. We discuss how our results may be used to understand the spins of disk galaxies and velocity structures of elliptical galaxies and their correlations with large-scale structure.