A systematic study of the inner rotation curves of galaxies observed as part of the GASS and COLD GASS surveys

TL;DR

This study systematically analyzes the rotation curves of 187 massive galaxies, revealing correlations between dark matter profiles, stellar populations, and angular momentum, using stellar spectra fitting for more accurate velocity measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method to derive stellar rotation curves from spectral fitting, enabling analysis of more galaxies and revealing new correlations with galaxy properties.

Findings

Dark matter halos fit by NFW profiles with average concentration of 10

Inner rotation curve slopes correlate with stellar population age

Low-mass, gas-rich galaxies have higher specific angular momentum ratios

Abstract

We present a systematic analysis of the rotation curves of 187 galaxies with masses greater than 10^10 M_sol, with atomic gas masses from the GALEX Arecibo Sloan Survey (GASS), and with follow-up long-slit spectroscopy from the MMT. Our analysis focuses on stellar rotation curves derived by fitting stellar template spectra to the galaxy spectra binned along the slit. In this way, we are able to obtain accurate rotation velocity measurements for a factor of 2 more galaxies than possible with the Halpha line. Galaxies with high atomic gas mass fractions are the most dark-matter dominated galaxies in our sample and have dark matter halo density profiles that are well fit by Navarro, Frenk & White profiles with an average concentration parameter of 10. The inner slopes and of the rotation curves correlate more strongly with stellar population age than with galaxy mass or structural parameters. At fixed stellar mass, the rotation curves of more actively star-forming galaxies have steeper inner slopes than less actively star-forming galaxies. The ratio between the galaxy specific angular momentum and the total specific angular momentum of its dark matter halo, R_j, correlates strongly with galaxy mass, structure and gas content. Low mass, disk-dominated galaxies with atomic gas mass fractions greater than 20% have median values of R_j of around 1, but massive, bulge-dominated galaxies have R_j=0.2-0.3. We argue that these trends can be understood in a picture where gas inflows triggered by disk instabilities lead to the formation of passive, bulge-dominated galaxies with low specific angular momentum.