Climbing to the top of the galactic mass ladder: evidence for frequent prolate-like rotation among the most massive galaxies

TL;DR

This study presents stellar velocity maps of 25 massive early-type galaxies, revealing a high incidence of prolate-like rotation and complex kinematics, supporting the idea that such galaxies grow mainly through dissipation-less mergers.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence of prolate-like rotation in massive galaxies, highlighting its prevalence and implications for galaxy formation theories.

Findings

Approximately 50% of brightest cluster galaxies show prolate-like rotation.

Galaxies with complex kinematics are consistent with growth via dissipation-less mergers.

All studied galaxies fall on a mass-size relation linked to major mergers.

Abstract

We present the stellar velocity maps of 25 massive early type galaxies located in dense environments observed with MUSE. Galaxies are selected to be brighter than M_K=-25.7 magnitude, reside in the core of the Shapley Super Cluster or be the brightest galaxy in clusters richer than the Virgo Cluster. We thus targeted galaxies more massive than 10^12 Msun and larger than 10 kpc (half-light radius). The velocity maps show a large variety of kinematic features: oblate-like regular rotation, kinematically distinct cores and various types of non-regular rotation. The kinematic misalignment angles show that massive galaxies can be divided into two categories: those with small or negligible misalignment, and those with misalignment consistent with being 90 degrees. Galaxies in this latter group, comprising just under half of our galaxies, have prolate-like rotation (rotation around the major axis). Among the brightest cluster galaxies the incidence of prolate-like rotation is 50 per cent, while for a magnitude limited sub-sample of objects within the Shapley Super Cluster (mostly satellites), 35 per cent of galaxies show prolate-like rotation. Placing our galaxies on the mass - size diagram, we show that they all fall on a branch extending almost an order of magnitude in mass and a factor of 5 in size from the massive end early-type galaxies, previously recognised as associated with major dissipation-less mergers. The presence of galaxies with complex kinematics and, particularly, prolate-like rotators suggests, according to current numerical simulations, that the most massive galaxies grow predominantly through dissipation-less equal-mass mergers.